Kava: The Ultimate Guide to Nature's Anti-Stress Herb - Brossura

Greenwood-Robinson, Maggie

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0440234603 ISBN 13: 9780440234609

Casa editrice: Dell Pub Co, 1999

Riassunto

A fact-filled guide based on the latest research reveals kava's amazing ability to relieve chronic stress, defend against high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart disease, as well as information about dosages, potency, and availability. Original.

Su questo libro

L'autore

Maggie Greenwood-Robinson, Ph.D., is a certified nutritional consultant and the author or coauthor of over ten books on nutrition, including Natural Weight Loss Miracles and 21 Days to Better Fitness. She is on the advisory board of Physical/Let's Live magazine and is a frequent contributor to health and fitness magazines.

Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.

The Wonder Herb of the South Pacific

Imagine a natural remedy with the power to lift the stress and strain of everyday life . . . subdue anxiety . . . brighten a blue mood . . . and help you sleep like a baby at night.

Sound too good to be true?

Perhaps. Yet such a remedy really does exist! It's an herb called kava-kava (kava for short), and it's one of the most amazing nutritional supplements ever to hit the shelves. Grown on the islands of the South Pacific, kava is a veritable dream supplement, remarkable for its ability to treat stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and more. It is significant to note that kava's benefits have been verified by extensive research.

Kava produces a noticeable and pleasurable feeling of calm--without side effects or aftereffects. Virtually safe and nonaddictive in moderate doses, kava is fast becoming one of the hottest-selling herbs around, part of the $12.4 billion plus herb market worldwide. In 1998, consumers spent $50 million on kava alone!

Some experts feel kava is destined to be the biggest herbal supplement of all time because it offers a natural way to relieve stress--something everyone has, yet no one wants.

Clearly, kava is gaining runaway popularity, especially among the overworked of this generation, and decades of scientific research say it's just the antidote we need to unwind and de-stress.
IS Kava a Supplement or a Drug?

First and foremost, kava is an herb--one that has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a dietary supplement. An herb is a plant, or a part of a plant, valued for its medicinal qualities, aroma, or taste. Herbs and herbal remedies have been used through the ages, in every culture and civilization. The Bible and other religious texts mention herbs to promote healing. Ancient civilizations such as the Chinese, Greek, and Roman practiced herbal medicine for centuries. Until the twentieth century, physicians routinely prescribed herbal-based medicines for their patients. In fact, your grandmother and great-grandmother probably relied on herbs to treat illnesses in their day.

Nearly 50 percent of all our modern drugs are derived from herbs or contain a chemical imitation of a plant compound. One of the best known is aspirin. In the early 1800s, its active ingredient, salicin, was isolated with white willow bark, an anti-inflammatory plant used for thousands of years, and eventually synthesized into a chemical imitation known to us as aspirin. Penicillin, the kingpin of all antibiotics, is a mold produced by a type of primitive plant known as a fungus. Digitalis, an important drug used to treat congestive heart failure, was discovered two hundred years ago from an ingredient in foxglove, a common garden flower grown in England. Quinidine, an important cardiac drug, and its relative, quinine, long used to treat malaria, both come from the bark of the Peruvian cinchona tree. Another bark-derived drug, taxol, now shows promise as a powerful cancer-fighting drug. And numerous drugs prescribed in Europe today contain extracts of kava. Even now pharmaceutical companies are scouring rain forests and other primitive locales to find native remedies and botanicals that may hold the cures for modern diseases.
Resurgence of Interest in Herbal Medicine

Today there is a revival of tidal-wave proportions in the use of herbs to treat physical and mental disease. It is estimated that sixty million Americans now take herbs to help cure what ails them, from colds to allergies, from headaches to insomnia. And, according to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of the world's population uses herbs.

The reason for such popularity is that herbs work with your body's natural healing mechanisms, not against them. Many prescription medicines, on the other hand, can be quite toxic to the body and may tear down health rather than build it up. Over the years there have been many incidents in which approved pharmaceutical agents were yanked from the market because they had serious, sometimes fatal side effects. It is now estimated that accidental deaths from adverse reactions to prescription drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more than 100,000 lives a year.

Generally, herbs have been found to provide additional nutrients that restore health, protect the immune system, normalize body functions, and impart natural relief from health-harming emotions. Thus, herbal therapy is an effective, natural way to help the body heal itself.

In the United States today, many herbs--including kava--are approved dietary supplements. As defined by the United States government, a dietary supplement is a vitamin, mineral, herb or other botanical, an amino acid, and any dietary substance used to supplement the diet. The term also includes concentrates, metabolites, extracts, or combinations of herbs and botanical ingredients.

Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, supplement manufacturers can't say that products diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure disease. If they do, the product must be regarded as a drug and then must meet the safety and effectiveness standards for drugs. So if a kava-supplement manufacturer were to advertise that its kava product cures stress or anxiety, the company would find itself on the regulatory hot seat with the FDA. However, manufacturers may make nutrition support statements about their products--statements that describe how the product functions in the body. Thus, it's perfectly legal for a manufacturer to promote kava's ability to aid in relaxation. Also, supplement labels must carry the following disclaimer: "This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."

The term "kava" is the name of the plant as well as the beverage made from it. In some books and articles you may find kava described as a drug, an intoxicant, or a narcotic, although it is a legal, approved supplement. The reason kava is given these other descriptions is most likely due to the intoxicating effect more potent forms of kava--specifically the freshly ground root served in the South Pacific--has on the body. Raw root is unavailable in the United States or Europe. Instead, products are made from processed, dry root powder, which is much weaker, so it's quite unlikely that you would obtain the kava "high" experienced by South Pacific islanders.
The Gift of Tranquillity from the Pacific

Today kava is found in three distinct cultural regions of the world collectively referred to as Oceania: Melanesia, which includes the island countries of Fiji, Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides), New Guinea, and Papua New Guinea; Polynesia, which includes Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas Islands, Wallis, Futuna, Western and American Samoa, and Tonga; and Micronesia, which includes Pohnpei and Australia. These areas are scattered over nearly a third of the earth's surface and include some ten thousand islands. As then president George Bush told a summit of Pacific island leaders in 1990: "Like a string of pearls spread out across the sea, each nation is unique, each is precious, and each has something to contribute to the value of the whole."

One of Oceania's many contributions is, of course, kava--a true gift of tranquillity. Kava is woven into the very fabric of Oceanian life--religiously, socially, and politically--and is thought to be one of the reasons behind the islanders' laid-back way of life. Kava, with its ritual procedure for preparation and use, is one custom that is common to all peoples of Oceania. Consequently, it has attracted a great deal of attention from anthropologists, botanists, chemists, pharmacologists, doctors, and even archaeologists.

Kava is best understood when it is recognized that every culture in the world has some type of special plant customarily used to induce mind-altering and mood-altering effects. Betel nut, one of the world's most popular plants, is chewed, mashed, or pulverized by the peoples of India, Malaysia, and Polynesia and used as a stimulant. In southeast Mexico, Oaxacan tribes consume the psilocybe mushroom for its hallucinogenic and muscle-relaxing effects. African pygmies smoke their psychoactive cannabis, derived from the hemp plant, and Andean natives chew their coca leaf, the source of the illegal drug cocaine. From 1891 until about 1908, the Coca-Cola Company formulated its popular cola drink with cocaine from coca leaves and caffeine from kola nuts, a plant whose seeds are high in the stimulant caffeine. Today Coke's products are made with caffeine and natural flavorings.

More familiarly, tobacco leaves contain a powerfully addictive substance known as nicotine. From the beans of the coffee tree and the leaves of the tea bush come caffeine, the most widely used drug in the world. Thus, a huge array of various plants yields various natural chemicals, ranging from the benign to the very dangerous. In moderate doses, kava is on the benign end of the spectrum.
Why Kava Works

For centuries kava has been used as a folk medicine to treat a vast number of ailments. These have included headaches, joint pain, bladder problems, gonorrhea, stomach problems, leprosy, skin diseases, weight loss, sleeping problems, and tuberculosis.

Since the 1800s much research has been devoted to identifying why kava provides such amazing therapeutic benefits. In fact, kava is one of the most extensively studied herbs, with hundreds of scientific studies backing up its healing properties and verifying its power as a therapeutic agent capable of conferring remarkable benefits. For example, kava:

relieves everyday stress
significantly lowers anxiety after only one week of use
effectively manages long-term anxiety
is as effective as some prescription drugs in reducing serious anxiety induces relaxation
acts as a muscle relaxant
has analgesic (pain-...

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Dell Pub Co
• Data di pubblicazione: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0440234603
• ISBN 13: 9780440234609
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 239