Dermopathy, and it's disappearance.

[The Kap'n]

I'm no stranger to the skin derps commonly associated with kava, but I feel it's necessary to report what I've found in the types of kava I drink related to the dermapothy I recieve from them.

I can honestly say that I'm nearly dermapothy free since I switched my nightly kavas to confirmed noble varieties. It's starting to make more sense why @nemo never gets it from fresh root in Vanuatu. Don't get me wrong, this is no endorsement of any particular vendor, as I believe all vendors have the propensity to be sure their kava is noble, so no stabs and jabs to those unaware at the moment.

I've been drinking stupidly strong kavas for my entire kava drinking duration. Usually boroguru and I had a run with marked tudei for a while but that ended with bleeding skin. Since I switched to a variety that is known without a doubt to be noble my skin condition has been slowly clearing each day. I'd say it's taken much much longer than if I had stopped kava all together, but honestly....ain't nobody got time for that. Even under my arms has completely cleared up. Something I thought would never happen.

So, if any of you are struggling with the skin effects I urge you to research and find a completely noble type, drink it for 3-4 weeks consistently (or as consistently as you normally would) and tell me what you find. I'm thinking my skin has been hoodwinked for this nearly decade of kava drinking. It's a breath of fresh air for me.

 

[Monkava'd]

I'm no stranger to the skin derps commonly associated with kava...I can honestly say that I'm nearly dermapothy free since I switched....kavas to confirmed noble varieties. It's starting to make more sense why @nemo never gets it from fresh root in Vanuatu..... Since I switched to a variety that is known without a doubt to be noble my skin condition has been clear. I'd say it's taken much much longer than if I had stopped kava all together, but honestly....ain't nobody got time for that. Even under my arms has completely cleared up.

So, if any of you are struggling with the skin effects I urge you to research and find a completely noble type, drink it for 3-4 weeks consistently (or as consistently as you normally would) and tell me what you find.

What I quoted in your post is a perfect summation of my experience with dermopathy thus far and I haven't had it for months since I've been using the good ol noble.

 

[violet]

This mirrors my dermopathy situation also. The first bout of dermopathy I ever had came on with raw, red, irritated skin, very close to bleeding in some places. All I could do was stop for a little while and then cut back to prevent it from getting worse, it was always a balancing act. Most all new bouts of dermopathy I would have to baby skin that was raw and painful before it would heal to dry dermopathy.

With drinking completely noble kava, even in large amounts in the form of micronized, my dermopathy issues have disappeared. Beyond anything arguable, this is a huge reason for me to switch to known noble kavas only. I have always pondered if kava induced dermopathy wasn't some kind of cholestatic pruritus, but I think scant discussion of kava's effect on liver function being implicated in causing dermopathy could have been easily dismissed, since noble cultivars have always been deemed completely safe. If we have been drinking tudei blends and we can say that has been the cause of dermopathy for many of us, it may be worth considering that regular consumption of tudei can put undesirable stress on the liver.

The last few orders of what I used to drink would induce in me severe dermopathy with the first session. It's a frustrating thing to have to worry about when the need for kava is greater than the issue of dealing with dermopathy. I am very, very happy knowing I can drink kava and not get any dermopathy as long as the kava is 100% noble.

 

[HeadHodge]

I guess I would be interested in knowing if anyone is using a blend without dermo. I'm willing to be a guinea pig if needed to find out. Currently I do both 100% noble and also blends and I do have a mild case of dermo. So I'm really not able to weigh in on this at the moment. If you have any recommendations on a good solid way to do a human study (meaning me), let me know.

 

[Gourmet Hawaiian Kava]

I guess I would be interested in knowing if anyone is using a blend without dermo. I'm willing to be a guinea pig if needed to find out. Currently I do both 100% noble and also blends and I do have a mild case of dermo. So I'm really not able to weigh in on this at the moment. If you have any recommendations on a good solid way to do a human study (meaning me), let me know.

The most solid way for you would be to stop drinking a mixed kava and only drink Noble, then if the dermopothy goes away the first part of your experiment is done. The second part would be to stop drinking Noble and start drinking some Noble/Tudei mix, the more tudei you can get in the mix the better for this experiment. If you start to get dermopothy again then stop the mixed kava and return to the Noble. If it clears up again I would say that is good enough proof for me that the Noble is better at not causing the dermopothy.
Aloha.

Chris
P.S. I have been drinking Noble for years and years and I have no dermopothy at all.

 

[HeadHodge]

The most solid way for you would be to stop drinking a mixed kava and only drink Noble, then if the dermopothy goes away the first part of your experiment is done. The second part would be to stop drinking Noble and start drinking some Noble/Tudei mix, the more tudei you can get in the mix the better for this experiment. If you start to get dermopothy again then stop the mixed kava and return to the Noble. If it clears up again I would say that is good enough proof for me that the Noble is better at not causing the dermopothy.
Aloha.

Chris
P.S. I have been drinking Noble for years and years and I have no dermopothy at all.

Hi Chris, sure that is what I figured out too. But I'm not sure what would be a good period of time for doing that (like for example a month for each or ???). Also I'm not sure if I should just pick only two products (one 100% Noble and one Blended) or try a collection of each (i.e. multiple 100% Nobles, then multiple blends) I would use @Deleted User's test results to pick which kava to use.

 

[Hyperion]

It's starting to make more sense why @nemo never gets it from fresh root in Vanuatu.

Just one question here, Kapmcrunk. Does nemo live in Vanuatu? If so, I'm not coming right out and saying that's a factor, but I will say, as a sufferer of seborrheic dermatitis, it's always worse in the winter, and when I'm spending time in a true tropical climate, it just clears completely up and I don't have any problems with it at all.

I don't know if kava induced dermopathy reacts similarly to climate, but I will say that I had it, it was summer, I wasn't having much problems with the sebderm, and it cleared up all on it's own. If it was anything related to the kava I was drinking, then I will have to say that it doesn't have anything to do with the strength of kava because I was drinking Stone the entire time when it just disappeared. Maybe it's because I don't need as much kava with the stupid strong stuff?

 

[Hyperion]

Chris
P.S. I have been drinking Noble for years and years and I have no dermopothy at all.

Hey Chris, see my post above. Again, I'm not trying to jump to any conclusions, but I'm trying to get into the conversation and throw out some ideas. You do live in HI, yes? I'm just saying, that could be a factor, and it could be a major one, I think we don't know yet.

 

[kavadude]

I live in Houston and have not really noticed a difference based on humidity (which, from here, March - Oct is comparably humid to Vanuatu/Hawaii)

 

[HeadHodge]

I think another good experiment would be if Chris supplied me with a supply of exactly the same of one of his kava's in mirco grind, but one with makas and the other without. Then toss 'n wash each for a month and compare results.

 

[HeadHodge]

I live in Houston and have not really noticed a difference based on humidity (which, from here, March - Oct is comparably humid to Vanuatu/Hawaii)

In Austin??? Or are you maybe on the coast like Galveston?? I lived in Austin for 2 years and don't remember excessive humidity there (but again that was a loooonnnnnggggg time ago.)

 

[kavadude]

I live north of Houston, not far from the coast. It's more humid than Austin, although not by a whole lot.

 

[Gourmet Hawaiian Kava]

Hey Chris, see my post above. Again, I'm not trying to jump to any conclusions, but I'm trying to get into the conversation and throw out some ideas. You do live in HI, yes? I'm just saying, that could be a factor, and it could be a major one, I think we don't know yet.

HI Hyperion, no problem, anyone is welcome to join the conversation. I also do not know if the climate has anything to do with it but I would lean toward saying no because the dermopothy is a known problem in Fiji and Tonga and even here in Hawaii, I know people how get it. If they lessen the amount of kava they drink or stop all together it will go away. It is dependent on the amount of kava you drink each day and the amount of double bonded kavalactones in the kava your drinking, the DHK and DHM, also Methyisticin is also a culprit in this and that is #6 so kava that is high in this kavalactone could also cause you to get the dermopothy.
We do know for a fact that if you have the kava induced dermopothy and you stop drinking kava it will go away. I have noticed that some of my friends who get the dermo problems will only cut back on how much they drink and it will go away but they are drinking only Hawaiian kava.
It is interesting to notice that others are seeing the effect that drinking Noble kava will stop there dermo problems. Thanks kapm for posting this. Great information.
Aloha.

Chris

 

[sɥɐʞɐs]

It took me a solid year of drinking heavy waka (spiked with tudei) almost every day to finally get dermopathy. It happened to finally show up during a particularly dry winter we had. I can't say for sure if that's coincidence or not. But it definitely didn't seem to help. It also has seemed as though, once I got it, the more likely I was to get it.

I've currently been only drinking noble, both strained med. grind and unstrained micros, and I have a very light touch of dermopathy. My guess would be that tudei's may very well get you there quicker, but noble's are still capable of it, they just give you more leeway. I read the ancient Hawaiians, who would have only been consuming fresh noble kava, would deliberately let a princess (or something like that) drink kava to excess...so that she would shed her skin and have a fresh smooth layer.(ancient beauty secrets) There's also this transcript from a Hawaiian historian in 1860:

"Ka po'e kahiko [the ancient people] liked 'awa as a means of reducing weight.
When a man saw himself growing too fat, or perhaps constantly being sick, then
'awa was the thing to restore health or to slim the body . The way to do it was to drink
'awa like the 'aumakua [family gods] or the kaula prophets, that is, copiously, until
the skin scaled . . . Awa was a refuge and an absolution . Over the 'awa cup were
handed down the tabus and laws of the chiefs, and the tabus of the gods, and the laws
of the gods governing solemn vows and here the wrongdoer received absolution of
his wrongdoing . . ."
​

I've seen other mentions of it in old writings too, but I can't find them at the moment. So it seems like they were definitely capable of making it happen. I also saw clear cases of dermopathy when I was in Samoa, and their most widely consumed kava's there are 'Ava Lea & 'Ava La'au, which are both noble. They might have some tudei floatin' around somewhere though, I just never here about it being in Polynesia as much as it is in Melanesia.

Anyway, I'm glad you guys are seeing a reversal in your scales. It's at least another positive, for noble, that it likely takes much more aggressive drinking to get to the same level of dermopathy as we were previously used to.

 

[kavadude]

@shakas I noticed that too, it took me a long time to get my first case of dermopathy but now if I start drinking its only 2-3 weeks. I do believe it has something to do with antigens being deposited in the skin and the lifecycle of the skin is also implicated. I imagine they are still present even after it becomes non-visible and perhaps taking an even longer break would help. But I don't know.

 

[Gourmet Hawaiian Kava]

I think another good experiment would be if Chris supplied me with a supply of exactly the same of one of his kava's in mirco grind, but one with makas and the other without. Then toss 'n wash each for a month and compare results.

I could do that but I am not sure that I would feel good about doing that, maybe it would be better for you to buy some Isa from some other Hawaiian vendors and some Noble from me and just drink the Isa till you get dermo and then stop the Isa and go to the Noble and keep drinking that to see if the dermo goes away. If it does not then you must drink a lot of kava.
I guess if it did not go away then all you would have to do is stop drinking kava.
Aloha.

Chris

 

[HeadHodge]

I could do that but I am not sure that I would feel good about doing that, maybe it would be better for you to buy some Isa from some other Hawaiian vendors and some Noble from me and just drink the Isa till you get dermo and then stop the Isa and go to the Noble and keep drinking that to see if the dermo goes away. If it does not then you must drink a lot of kava.
I guess if it did not go away then all you would have to do is stop drinking kava.
Aloha.

Chris

Well I don't think you understood my meaning. I believe you said that you removed the makas from your micronized. So I was suggesting that maybe I could get some (let's say Mo'i) from you that is micronized, but one with the makas in it and the other without. That way I could experiment if the dermo is more prevalent with the makas or not. I have no desire to experiment with pure ISA, especially for a month or more at a time. This is only just about experimenting for dermo.

 

[Hyperion]

HI Hyperion, no problem, anyone is welcome to join the conversation. I also do not know if the climate has anything to do with it but I would lean toward saying no because the dermopothy is a known problem in Fiji and Tonga and even here in Hawaii, I know people how get it.

Chris

Thanks, Chris, for that. I was sort of leaning towards it doesn't matter (climate), seeing that I got it in the summer here in Baltimore, where it is pretty humid in the summer, while I was having no issues with sebderm. But now, I am wondering if the kava itself and it's contents is the determining factor. I had a fairly bad case of it. When I say bad, I mean it looked bad for anyone who could see it, it was on my sides all the way from my underarms to my mid thighs, big splotches of it. But it never itched or anything that would make me know I had it if I didn't see it in the mirror after a shower. Then it just cleared up, all on it's own even though I never changed my daily intake of kava. But the type of Kava I was consuming, did change, that is the only factor I can see right now, as maybe a determining one.

 

[Roaddog]

Well I don't think you understood my meaning. I believe you said that you removed the makas from your micronized. So I was suggesting that maybe I could get some (let's say Mo'i) from you that is micronized, but one with the makas in it and the other without. That way I could experiment if the dermo is more prevalent with the makas or not. I have no desire to experiment with pure ISA, especially for a month or more at a time. This is only just about experimenting for dermo.

Well I wouldn't worry too much. I think it was @Deleted User , that said he kept a spare liver for you in his freezer. You can do your ISA experiment, then remove Liver from freezer, microwave, for 5 minutes, and slap in, and go. Well maybe the process is a bit more labor intensive than that.. Much love. Roaddog....