Episode 302: Kava: The Nootropic More Powerful Than CBD
I know you know today's guest, former client, now product consultant and friend – Cameron George. Well, Cam wears many hats, and he's here to share one more.
Cameron (or ‘Kava Cam', as my kids call him) has devoted many years to the development of a full-spectrum kava oil, and it's been a big part of his own healing journey in the process.
Kava is a healing root that is more powerful than CBD, and supports a calm mind, a positive mood, enhanced sociability, better focus, deeper sleep, and has anti-inflammatory properties… as long as it is real Kava. Until Cam developed his own, it has been nearly impossible to source. This healing kava supplement was truly birthed out of Cameron's pain to purpose story, and we are honored to share it with you.
More about Cameron George:
Cameron is the founder of KAVAPLEX, a project that has been many years in development and is centered around delivering safe, palatable, user friendly traditional Kava products to the modern world.
Since Discovering the amazing effects of traditional Kava during his own chronic illness, Cameron spent many years investigating every aspect of Kava and has collaborated with many of the most prominent experts in the world in the fields of Kava research and historical Kava use.
The goal of this project is to provide the safest and most effective Kava products on the market, as well as educate the public on the complex story surrounding Kava, explaining some of the myths, the massive variation of quality on the market, and the many amazing benefits that Kava can offer when it’s used correctly in its traditional form.
It is an initiative to educate on the clear distinction that the scientific literature and historical accounts have made between Safe and questionable Kava products, as well as advocate the use of only lab tested safe Kava varieties.
Show notes:
Try Kava for yourself and use the code ‘pompa' for 20% off: KAVAPLEX
CHTV episode 282: How to Biohack Your Fasts
CHTV episode 173: Using Plant Medicine for Anxiety
CHTV episode 70: Overcoming Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
Dr. Pompa's new release Beyond Fasting is now shipping! Order here!
Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
Cameron George, I’m sure you’ve heard the name if you’ve been watching Cell TV. If not, well, his story, unbelievable. However, we didn’t tell his story today. My kids call him Kava Cameron or Kava Cam. Why? Because he’s a wealth of knowledge on kava. I know you’ve heard of the CBD craze. I believe, Cam believes, others believe kava is more powerful.
Wait until you see the benefits of kava. It has to be real kava. He talks about that. He devoted many years to this because it was one of the products that saved his life and allowed him to be able to detox because he was stuck on Benzodiazepines because of all his sensitivities from being sick. This was from pain to purpose and now he’s Kava Cam. You’re going to hear an amazing story, yes, but he’s going to talk about an amazing product that I use all the time: sleep, anxiety, you name it, even just neurotropic, breaking through brain fog, and using it even during the day let alone sleeping at night. Alright, stay tuned; you’ll love Cam.
Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. Today, we welcome back a familiar guest and friend to the show, Cameron George. You’ll likely remember him as Dr. Pompa’s former patient and now researcher/developer of the fasting and stem cell products mentioned in “Episode 282.”
Cameron is also the founder of KAVAPLEX, a project that has been many years in development and is centered around delivering safe, palatable, user-friendly, traditional kava products to the modern world. Cameron is here to share the many amazing benefits that kava can offer when it’s used correctly in its traditional form. I cannot wait to hear more. I will turn this over to you two as I know your conversations are always filled with tons of well-researched material. Let’s get started and welcome Cameron George and Dr. Pompa to the show; welcome, guys.
Cameron George:
Thanks so much for having me.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, well, my kids call you Kava Cam. Kava Cam, welcome to Cell TV. You’re no beginner here; you’ve been on Cell TV one, two—is this your third or fourth?
Cameron George:
Oh, it’s the fourth or maybe fifth because we did—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, anyway, if you haven’t watched the episodes from the very beginning, Ashley will put all the episodes in because you have to hear Cam’s story. We definitely don’t have time to tell it, but it’s from pain to purpose like mine. Through it, Cam, like myself, found a passion for researching. We have to tell a little bit about it because how kava? Why did Cam get so into kava?
There’s a medication that’s a benzodiazepine which basically calms the nerve system and allowed Cam to function even during the detox and during life. We were trying desperately to get him off of this med. The problem is he wasn’t able to. He started researching different plants, different herbs. Kava was the magic for him.
Tell that portion of the story, Cam, so they understand how you got so into every nuance of kava. You are the kava king, man, everything. Now, you’ve developed a new product that I think all of our viewers are going to benefit from.
Cameron George:
Yeah, it’s interesting how I just fell into this. It was one of those right place, right time type of things. This is a plant that’s just like many other supplements, compounds, plant compounds that are available. It’s nothing new, but it’s a rediscovery and something that needs to be introduced in the correct way into the modern context for more practical use so that people can actually get the true benefits of it.
Yeah, I’ve told my story many times on here before for people who have heard it, I’m sure. I was one sick puppy. I was one of these really complex cases that are becoming, unfortunately, more and more common, very unexplainable plethora of different symptoms.
In a nutshell, it was full-blown autoimmunity. Started with brain fog and fatigue and ended up in full-blown environmental illness, chemical sensitivity, consistent seizures, reactions, anaphylactic reactions. I was reacting to everything in my environment, which happens whenever the body’s metaphorical stress bucket becomes overburdened and immune system goes crazy, nervous system goes crazy, limbic system goes crazy as part of a protective response because the system has been so stressed out. It’s essentially a form of PTSD that manifests both neurologically and immunologically. It’s just a complete explosion and hypersensitization of the body.
Dr. Pompa:
I was there, too. After I got my life back in many ways, energy, focus, could work out, I was left in this state of hypersensitivity to chemicals, molds, environment. It was a disaster for me. I didn’t have this when I was going through that. Here’s the product you actually spent so much time researching and creating. Okay, so with that, Cam, Klonopin became your—you couldn’t live life without it. Explain what that did and why and what we knew we had to replace to get off of that.
Cameron George:
Yeah, absolutely. This is really going to hit home for so many people out there because I’d say out of all the clients and patients, the doctors in our network and elsewhere, functional medicine doctors, standard allopathic doctors as well, one of the key symptoms that most people in the midst of a chronic disease process express is anxiety and insomnia. That’s because so many of these chronic illnesses are a combination of different stressors that rev up the body’s nervous system and the body’s limbic system as well. A lot of these are neurotoxic in origin, so these are neurotoxic illnesses or at least neurotoxins play a key role in the accumulation. That was a key part of the solution of how I got myself out of it as well, too.
Anyway, because so many of these conditions are conditions that express anxiety as one of its key symptoms—and also one of the symptoms that makes it very difficult to even have your wits about you enough to pull together and do the combination of things that’s actually going to get you well. Because whenever you’re in a state of perpetual anxiety and sleeplessness, it’s very difficult to have a clear perspective on anything and remain motivated and just sane. That was the situation that I was in except for mine was even on the absolute extreme where the reactions that I was having were sending me into seizures, sending me to an anaphylactic type of situations. They were actually dangerous and at some points actually quite lethal. Even if you’re on the more mild part of that spectrum and you’re one of the millions of people out there suffering with sleeplessness, anxiety, irritability, just one of the key signs of chronic illness, a lot of people end up on these benzodiazepine-like drugs, not because they want to go on medication; who wants to go on a medication or be dependent on one? This epidemic of anxiety, sleeplessness, depression, all of these things is exploded so tremendously that people are desperate—
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s face it, it works for most people. It gives them some type of symptom relief, not everybody. Here’s the problem is it works on the short-term, but the long-term effect becomes disastrous and very difficult to come off.
Cameron George:
Just like any drug, the principle of synthetic pharmacology is the art of borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today, basically with your chemistry just like using alcohol. If you have anxiety or depression and you use alcohol, if you take a few shots of vodka or tequila you get results, but that’s not a solution because you’re going to end up worse and worse and worse the more you do that because instead of creating more of these chemicals that you’re lacking, these inhibitory chemicals that calm your bodies, these hormones like serotonin and GABA and these things, you’re actually just using up what you have. You end up more in debt with your own body’s chemistry.
This is something like whenever we were in the midst of my process, I was heavily dependent on these benzodiazepine-like drugs. The problem was is that I had gotten a level of tolerance; they weren’t even helping me anymore. If I were to stop them or start to taper, my nervous system would go through the roof because it was so depleted from the use of it.
–
I would also go into a withdrawal process. Like any withdrawal process, your body tends to ricochet in the opposite direction. The withdrawals actually can be lethal at their worst when it comes to benzodiazepines, similar to what we see with opiates and things as well.
Obviously, whenever we were in the midst of my process years ago, we got to a point where I couldn’t tolerate anything because I was so sensitive. I couldn’t take the smallest dosage of a supplement. I wasn’t sleeping. My nervous system, it’s a negative feedback loop. I just kept getting more and more revved up. My anxiety was through the absolute roof. I just needed something to make the process a little easier to get my reactions down, to calm my nervous system, allow me to sleep, make the detox more tolerable so I wouldn’t be in total, absolute meltdown every second of every day.
We were looking for a plant-based analog; meaning something out of the plant or fungal kingdom, out of the natural world that acted in a similar way on the nervous system that bound to the same receptors as these benzodiazepine drugs but without creating the tolerance and withdrawal type of symptoms that you get from the synthetic compounds. Which is something that is a feasible thing to be looking for in nature because a lot of times when you talk about plant compounds, these things just like our bodies they’re naturally occurring. They’re far more complex than just a single molecule like a synthetic drug is. Our body recognizes them and can interface with these natural compounds because it’s a living system as well.
A plant is from a living system. It can interface with your body. Many times, plants are not addictive for that reason because the body doesn’t see them as foreign. It’s able to interface with those compounds without creating the depleting effect on your chemistry. These are much more compatible.
Dr. Pompa:
Right, and so people coming off are looking for something like this. Which at that time, we didn’t know if it would work or not. I just said, hey—
Cameron George:
Goal.
Dr. Pompa:
Every natural compound let’s find that works on the same receptors that these benzos do and let’s see what happens. Really, you’ve tried them all; you did it all. It wasn’t just kava; you realized it was specific strains of kava, that it had to be kava done the right way. Talk about that.
By the way, folks, if anxiety, sleep, everything that Cam just said, this helps; however, it goes beyond that. We’ve learned a lot about this. This helps the body in autophagy. This helps the body do so many things. Athletes can use it for a better recovery, deeper sleep.
There’s a lot that benzo—I would argue the craze right now of CBD, I think this is the next craze because it does so many things that CBD does better actually. I’m not throwing CBD under the bus because oftentimes the combination of the two is actually really good, but oftentimes, this actually works better for people than CBD. Cam, talk about all the—what you found out about the right kava. Most of the kava that you go to the store and buy, it’s crap, doesn’t work because most people like myself would go, oh, I tried kava; I didn’t notice anything.
Cameron George:
Yeah, absolutely. I think the CBD comparison is a fantastic one. It’s one that I always use when trying to get people to understand the significance of a product like this or of a plant compound like this because most of us are aware that there are a huge—that there’s a huge number of different applications that have become popular in regards to CBD. It’s not just something that’s being totted for anxiety relief, and stabilizing mood, and enhancing deep sleep, but it also has immune modulation effects, and reducing inflammation, and has some possible mechanisms that could help in the process of beating cancer.
We talk about the cannabinoid system and stuff. Kava’s the same way. The reason is because these compounds that come out of nature have hundreds of different active constituents, so like I said, are very biological compatible—or biologically compatible. It’s because they come from the natural world.
Just like with cannabis and just like with hemp and CBD, kava we know now after going through all of the research, which there’s more on kava than there is just about any other plant out there besides cannabis and a few others, that it has so many different applications outside of what it’s most famous for which is anxiety relief and mood-lifting and stuff. It has a lot of different metabolic effects. I’ll go into some of those in a moment.
Just to address the quality issue, whenever I first started researching kava—and first of all, yeah, we tried a lot of different compounds, CBD being one of them. CBD is great, but it just wasn’t enough. All the other ones like chamomile, valerian, passionflower, lemon balm, all of these other compounds that bind to these really inhibitory receptors, these GABA receptors that are so crucial to kava’s central mechanism, they just aren’t strong enough. They’re very subtle. They’re good for a healthy person, but they really don’t have that acutely medicinal punch that say like alcohol or benzodiazepines would.
If you research anxiolytic compounds that appear in nature, then you’re going to come across kava. Whenever I first came across it, I said, well, I’ve already tried kava. I had; there are actually some preparations you can buy over the counter at Whole Foods and other health food stores that are called kava kava. That’s like an American type of name that’s given to kava extracts which are not kava at all in 99.9% of cases. I really didn’t think that it was that big of a deal because I had tried those capsules before; it was akin to the effects that I would get off of a cup of chamomile tea or a soothing cup of like Reishi Mushroom Four Sigmatic Tea or something. I just wasn’t that impressed with it. I’m like, well, it’s in the same wheelhouse of some of those other inhibitory compounds.
Then I got in contact with a couple of individuals who were from the islands which is where kava originates, so from Fiji was my first contact and then in Vanuatu which is an island chain right off of Fiji. Like I said, that’s where it originates. I said, “Well, I’ve tried kava. Can you tell me anything else about kava, how to use it? Am I doing something wrong because the literature is showing all of these effects, the anthropological accounts are showing all these? It’s absolutely sacred to this whole group of people going back 3,000 years. What am I missing?”
They said, “Well, you haven’t tried real kava. You’ve tried these extracts.” I said, “Well, what’s the difference?” We started to go down that rabbit hole, started to look into the literature, and some of the doctors, researchers, scientists that were making these clear distinctions between the two types.
Basically, traditional kava is a drink preparation in these islands that they’ve been preparing out of the roots of Piper Methysticum, which is a small shrub in the pepper family. You have to make the traditional preparation with either pressure or some kind of a grinding and kneading and a specific type of extraction to get out the full entourage of active constituents that all work together to bring out its full effects. Whenever you use tradition extraction methods like the methods that are used for these products that you find in health food stores, you use what’s called a solvent. A solvent is a substance like alcohol or sometimes—
Dr. Pompa:
When you say traditional, you mean in this country traditional, not kava traditional.
Cameron George:
Right, yeah, exactly. True traditional kava is what I’m talking about that’s actually the drink. That’s really where the magic is. Traditional extracts in our country and countries around the world are the ones that you find in capsules and all these other different forms. They’re made by using what’s called a solvent like alcohol or sometimes something a lot worse like acetone or methane or some of these things.
Basically, it’s a substance that you mix with it to perform an extraction. It grabs to certain things and pulls them out. The problem is that kava’s potency really relies on the entourage of all of these compounds: the larger ones, the mid-sized ones, the smaller ones, all of the active constituents which are called kavalactones, and then all the enzymes that help accentuate those kavalactones in your body as well as increase their bioavailability, help them make it to the cell, etc. The problem is that solvents grab a few of those compounds and separate it out. You reduce the potency by like 80 or 90% whenever you do that. You kill some of the effects totally. You end up with something that’s just a small shade of what real kava actually became famous for.
Once I made contact with some individuals in these islands, that started sending me some good high-quality, good strands of really good kava root and told me how to prepare it traditionally. I prepared it. It’s a tedious process. You have to squeeze it in this strainer bag for 30 minutes. You get gunk everywhere. It comes out in a film that comes to the surface. There’s tannins and root fibers. You end up with something that looks a lot like muddy water.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I saw it.
Cameron George:
It tastes like it, too. It’s basically muddy water is what you’re drinking. I got effects so quickly off of doing that. The first time I took it, I noticed it. Then there’s also accumulative crescendoing effect with kava because it builds up in your system. It upregulates these systems as opposed to what you get with a synthetic drug where you get less and less of an effect. The longer you take it, it’s the opposite. As I started to use it, after about two weeks, I was totally blown away by it. After a month even—
Dr. Pompa:
I think that’s an important point. I forget the challenge that you say, maybe it’s the 21-day challenge because if you can keep people on longer, the effects actually go up, which is opposite of many like a street drug or a drug. It’s like you have more of an effect in the beginning and it gets less. This is opposite; it works up.
Cameron George:
Yeah, and this is just the—one of the amazing things about plant intelligence and about plant pharmacology is that its complexity interfaces with your body totally differently than we would think of with like a synthetic pharmaceutical. We know that with any synthetic pharmaceutical, you’re going to get the most prominent effects the first time you take it. Your body is going to create a tolerance around that because it’s a foreign molecule. It’s going to say, hey, we have too much of these chemicals. We’re going to stop producing that chemical in our own body. With kava, and cannabis is like this too to some degree, it’s very complex. It interfaces with the receptors in a very different way that we know actually now from some of the data coming out that it causes more of a reverse tolerance.
Dr. Pompa:
Cannabis again, cannabis is CBD, folks.
Cameron George:
Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, cannabis is marijuana or CBD depending on which type that you’re using. We know now from some of the data coming out that we’re actually seeing what we call a reverse tolerance and what the traditional natives have called a reverse tolerance for many years where it’s just the opposite. The more you use, the more of an effect that you get and the less you actually need. This is happening because instead of downregulating and depleting that chemical in your body—in this case, it’s working on the GABA system which is the primary system for the breaks of your nervous system. It just shuts the system down, allows you to sleep, relax, all that stuff. That’s what benzos work on.
Instead of depleting that system, we actually see an increase in GABA receptor density and GABA A activity in the nervous system over a long-term use that continues to increase the longer a person uses it. Then eventually, it levels off. It’s not only giving an acute therapeutic action to the person like a benzo would, but it’s also helping to rehabilitate the underlying deficient in the nervous system which is just—this is part of plant intelligence. There’s an intelligence whenever you get things out of the natural world that you just can’t mimic with a synthetic compound. The efficiency is just—that’s where a lot of science is really going is understanding that we have to use science not to contradict or undermine the intelligence of the body, but to actually be able to harness the intelligence in nature and amplify it in various ways through extraction methods and potency and so on.
Dr. Pompa:
Talk about KAVAPLEX. My son loves it. I love it. Talk about from what you just said, what you ended up doing with this because that process is very difficult as you said.
Cameron George:
Oh, it is.
Dr. Pompa:
The muddy water, we don’t want to be making muddy water. Talk about how this came to be. It was a Godsend. Right now, I just took some of it. I actually really like the test; for kava, that says a lot because kava’s strong.
Cameron George:
Oh, it does. That’s funny because that was the first problem that you and I ran into whenever we started trying it on other clients and basically giving it do the doctors and really unofficially promoting it because we were seeing such profound effects. In myself, just to touch on a couple of the effects that I got from it, I was able to get off benzodiazepines in a couple of months, basically, unheard of. My reactions reduced by 70 or 80% within that two to three months. It was just miraculous. I never would have expected results like that. Once we knew we had something special with it, this was something that just hadn’t been brought into the Western context in its true traditional form, it’s this hidden gem, then it was a question of, okay, now we’re giving it to people or recommending it to people and 80% of them are coming back and saying, this stuff takes like garbage.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, remember my clients that were like really needed this, I’d be like oh yeah, just call Cam. He’ll walk you through it because it’s like walking people through this process and then convincing them to drink muddy water. The ones who did, they got the result.
Cameron George:
Exactly; well, the thing is not only is it tedious, but if you screw it up, and if you don’t get the water to the right temperatures, and if you don’t apply the right amount of pressure, then it’s not nearly as strong. You’ll get a different effect every time. It’s a nightmare. Then you have crap everywhere in your kitchen. It takes a long time to clean up. It gets your strainers all gunky and stuff. Yeah, the taste is not good at all.
Then you have to—it’s one thing to do that once in a while, but we’re asking these people to do it every single day. That takes 30 minutes out of your day to do it. Again, a lot of people—
Dr. Pompa:
That’s why I was like, Cam, you’ve got to make this process simpler. We’ve got to get the traditional kava with right kavalactones in a product that’s simple.
Cameron George:
Right; then, we started doing some r&d. Once we realized that we really wanted to roll with this and to bring this into the marketplace in a real way—because no one else is doing it. We’re so far ahead on this. Obviously, people have tried but with traditional solvents. They don’t understand the unique pharmacology of and the chemical composition of kava and actually how to get out its full spectrum of constituents in a palatable, user-friendly form.
I had already been doing r&d on different stuff because I just—I spent the better part of the last decade just scouring medical scientific literature, building relationships with people across the industry: doctors, scientists, researchers, product formulators, all kinds of stuff. I already had built up a reservoir of knowledge on this stuff, which now came in handy obviously. I started looking at different ways that we could extract this.
Basically, a good friend of mine who’s a mechanical engineer from Germany had developed a method of processing seed oils that yeah, that were absolutely undamaged, which is just a profound thing because it’s very difficult to do that, to press at really low temperatures without grinding the plant material or the seeds and pulling oxygen down into it, and oxidizing the compounds. Kava, hemp, all of these things have the same problem. We needed a solvent-less extraction. We needed something that was applying pressure without heating it up past 95 degrees or a little bit higher than that probably but was difficult to find.
We finished up this process and developed the process, which is a special hydraulic pressing method that on the other side you get basically a pristine kava oil. We also use a type of sunflower that we press it with to get an undamaged sunflower oil out of it that’s not inflammatory like standard damaged sunflower oils a lot of times are. The lecithin in that acts as a carrier for the lactones. We press those two things together and then we pull out this very pristine oil on the other end that whenever we subject it to lipid peroxidation testing and what’s called a kavalactone chemo-type test.
Basically, that means we’re looking at the kava plant material before, we’re creating the extraction, and then we’re measuring it in the oil afterwards. We get what’s called a chemical fingerprint, like a six-digit chemical fingerprint. That tells us the ratios and the amounts of the active compounds of the six major active compounds. Measure it before and after and they’re almost identical; meaning that we haven’t created any denaturing. We’ve actually harnessed the full-spectrum of the active compounds.
It was a unique breakthrough. It actually sounds even simpler than it really was to dial the pressures in and even just the mechanical work behind the scenes on developing this pressing technology was huge in and of itself. That was a thing. Once we knew that we had something great, then we made it in a palatable form that tasted fine, too. Then we started testing it out on clients and patients. We got something that was really unique. Now, it’s palatable and user-friendly.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s the typical dose and when would somebody take this?
Cameron George:
Yeah, I think I may have touched on this before as—in regards to when a person would take it. The strain of kava that we used in the launching of this particular product is a strain that can be taken pretty much any time of day. There’s two hundred different strains of kava; just like with cannabis, some are more daytime, some are more nighttime, some are more nootropic and cognitively activating, and some are more sedating. This one is really balanced, so it’s not going to put you asleep, but it’s still going to relieve anxiety. It elicits a calm focus that runs in the background. It’s from a strain called Borogu, a really popular strand within Vanuatu.
They can take it basically any time of day. Obviously, do a little of experimentation. I usually recommend late afternoon. I usually would take one to two droppers full. You can go quite a bit higher than that because it’s a food-grade product; it’s not concentrated or denatured in any way. You can take up to four to eight droppers full if you really want to go to that next level with it.
You can also mix it in like a bulletproof style coffee if you’re wanting to take it as a nootropic but take the edge off of the caffeine. Both caffeine and MCT both intensify the absorption, both you speed up the absorption. It kicks a lot harder whenever you add it with either MCT or caffeine or both, so people are doing that as well.
You get good results basically any time of day. We wanted to make it as versatile as possible with this first product. We have a lot of other products on the horizon that in development right now. Some are actually much stronger; some are dialed into specifically nighttime; some are dialed into more of a powerful nootropic that’s not sedating at all.
This first part we wanted to make really versatile. We wanted to make it in a concentration that was subtle enough that you could take it any time of day. With this strain, you could take it at any time of day and it would run in the background. It’s not too overly intense so it’s extremely versatile.
We do have a product that we’re going to be launching in the next couple of months, hopefully, in November, that’s going to come in little packets. If you guys have seen companies out there like Four Sigmatic that have those mushroom packets, it’s a new powdered extract that’s quite a bit—that kicks quite a bit harder than this one, but sometimes less is more. It’s going to be geared more towards nighttime and that next level of therapeutic application.
Dr. Pompa:
My son broke his back; some of you watching this or listening to this know that. Cam was gracious enough to send Daniel some of those new versions coming out. Daniel fell in love with them.
Obviously, you break your back and he was bedbound they told him for 12 weeks; 2 weeks later, he was actually up walking. What a story there, but yeah, he should have been dead and he should have been paralyzed; he was neither. Obviously, we had to get him off of OxyContin. The kavas you sent were part of that, him coming off of that very quickly actually, so thank you.
Cameron George:
Yeah, it’s really amazing. Kava is definitely one of these safe, psychoactive hidden gems. It’s psychoactive in a form where you still maintain your sobriety. It doesn’t interfere with fine motor skills or anything like that.
We’ve seen everything in the literature. There’s just such a huge body of research on kava for drug and alcohol abuse, for pain, reduction in inflammation, for epilepsy and seizure disorders, there’s even a whole paradigm of research. A lot of the excitement is around kava as a therapeutic agent in cancer, too because we know that it activates autophagy and helps with keto-adaptation. It helps put your body into that self-recycling mode that we talk a lot about and we talked about on past shows with the Cell Clear. It’s an extra adjunct to that whole process in the body which we’re huge fans of. For keto-adaptation, suppressing appetite, activating autophagy, as well as the anxiolytic effects, reducing cortisol, enhancing mode. It really just is a profound substance.
Some of the products we have coming in the future that are more even geared towards more therapeutic and some even recreational, safe recreational as an alcohol alternative and stuff. We have a line of drinks that we’re working on that are even more potent on that side of things. Kava is an amazing, safe recreational agent that people can migrate to instead of alcohol all the time, instead of benzodiazepines, obviously, and any type of illicit drugs. It gives you that social enhancement without impairing any of your fine motor skills and totally not addictive. In the islands, they’d have kava bars. In Vanuatu in Fiji, they have 20 times, 10 to 20 times as many kava bars as they have regular bars because they prefer it to regular alcohol.
There’s a big application just bringing something in like kava into the culture because I think we’re looking for things right now. The CBD craze has proved that that are non-pharmaceutical alternatives, natural alternatives to pharmaceutical and drug agents that are non-addictive because we need these safe crutches even though that kava is not the ultimate big answer. There’s no magic pill or powder or lotion or potion. I’m not saying that kava totally healed me and made me well, but it was a crutch but a safe crutch that made my process way easier.
Dr. Pompa:
It allowed you to go higher levels of detox. We got you up to regular doses of detox where you all have to understand he was taking drops of cellular detox at one point, like one or two drops. It’s like—
Cameron George:
It made my life.
Dr. Pompa:
With the kava, we were able to ramp up so much faster just to knock down the sensitivity. Here’s a good one though with all the news right now of the vaping. People are going to have to move away from a lot of the things they’re vaping. They’re even getting bad CBD with bad marijuana. Some of the preservatives that are in there, I’ve been saying gosh, I wouldn’t want to oxidize that in my lungs. Could kava help people make a transition from some of those things?
Cameron George:
Absolutely, because kava affects multiple different systems in the brain that regulate cravings, and that regulate mood, and that regulate spasticity, and all of those things we just discussed. It affects the GABA system, so we touched on that. That’s its most profound mechanism, but it also affects the serotonin in a light way and then the dopamine system pretty substantially, in some strains more than others. It acts as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, a monoamine oxidase B inhibitor to be specific. Basically, what that means is that it helps block an enzyme that metabolizes or breaks down these dopamine-like citicolines in our nerve system that regulate our cravings and give us pleasure and such. It affects dopamine in a way that doesn’t deplete it. That’s very rare for a substance because most things that affect the dopamine system are highly addictive for that reason because they create a dysregulation and a downregulation, a desensitization.
The more you use say cocaine or say like a psychostimulant like Adderall, it’s going to desensitize your receptors to dopamine. We don’t see that with kava. It’s actually able to prop up that dopamine system and keep you satiated while you’re transitioning off of substances of abuse. That’s a common denominator of all of these substances of abuse.
That’s why it’s good for all of them and better for some that hit on some of the same different chemical systems as kava because it affects dopamine. Anything that’s addictive basically affects dopamine at some degree, whether it be nicotine, whether it be opiates, whether it be psychostimulants, Adderall, all of those things. Even though they’re psychostimulants and this is something that’s relieving anxiety, it has that component to it. It’s great at just relieving the stressful process of transitioning off anything. If you’re trying to adapt or you’re in any transitional process in your life that’s causing—that requires an adaptation, adaptations are stressful. This helps taper down the stress hormones and make you more adaptable to almost any change.
Dr. Pompa:
I had a client that used it successfully for just controlling their appetite. When we were keto adapting them, they were having trouble fat adapting. There’s another benefit.
Look, we’re at a hard stop, but tell them—I think we have a special link with Revelation Health has offered something. I’m sure Ashley will provide it to get KAVAPLEX on Revelation Health. I don’t know; try it. That’s all I can tell you. There’s so many darn uses. You just saw me just taking it now.
Cam, yeah, you’re a wealth of knowledge, man, especially in the world of kava, Kava Cam, as my kids say. You have all the answers. I’m sure we’ll have you on again, especially as some of the new products come out because they’re so useful. Our followers are health-seekers, people looking for—to get their life back. This is a tool, man, that was invaluable to you and many.
Cameron George:
I’m sure I’ll be doing a lot of product myth-busting on Heath Hunters too as well. We’ll have a chance to take some deep dives into some different myths around products I’m sure.
Dr. Pompa:
I love it, man; we love it. We see what’s real and works because we were both so sick for so long.
Cameron George:
Right, it’s the real deal; it’s not a gimmick. One of my big pet peeves is some of the just horrible quality control that goes on in the supplement industry and in most industries. They’re trying to cut their costs and so on. If you don’t have quality as one of your cornerstone ideals or one of your cornerstone motivations for what you’re trying to do, then you’re going to end up compromising quality. Cleanliness and therapeutic potency are two top priorities. Then we let the price needs to be what it may, but we’re also working constantly on getting the product down for—
Dr. Pompa:
I wasn’t interested in—I used to drive a Ford Bobcat, okay. I wasn’t interested in one of those; I was interested in a Ferrari. You created it. Alright, Cam, we’ll have you on again. Thanks for being on Cell TV.
Cameron George:
Awesome, see you, guys.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 AM Eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at cellularhealing.tv. Please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review, or sharing the show with anyone who may benefit from the information heard here. As always, thanks for listening.
