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Piper methysticum aka Awa Pepper, from China ---Habitat---Polynesia, Sandwich Islands, South Sea Islands.

Aroma and appearance: This intriguing batch is a finely powdered vanilla-mustard colour with a comforting milky vanilla scent and bitter, peppery taste that's numbing to the tongue.

Traditional Uses:
Kava Kava is traditionally used within special "Kava Rooms" as a ceremonial beverage in Polynesia. Practitioners prepare a fermented liquor from the upper portion of the rhizome and base of the stems; it is narcotic and stimulant and is drunk before important religious rites. The root of the plant when chewed and mixed with the saliva gives a hot intoxicating juice; it is mixed with pure water or the water of the coco-nut.

Common Uses: It is widely used as a mild sedative with relaxant properties and has been administered for nervousness, tension, cramping, anxiety and stress.

Medicinal Action: A local anesthetic, it relieves pain and has an aphrodisiac effect. The effect on the nerve centres is at first stimulating, then depressing, ending with paralysis of the respiratory centre. The irritant action and insolubility of the resin has lessened its use as a local anesthetic.

It has an antiseptic effect on the urine. For over 125 years Kava root has been found valuable in the treatment of gonorrhoea both acute and chronic, vaginitis, leucorrhoea, nocturnal incontinence and other ailments of the genitourinary tract. As Kava is a strong diuretic it is useful for gout, rheumatism, bronchial and other ailments, resulting from heart trouble.

Consult an herbalist for proper medicinal use, and see http://www.botanical.com/products/learn/kava_kava_root-powder.html for more information.

Constituents
Its active constituents are several different varieties of Kava lactones: Kava lactones, kawahin, yanoginin, methysticin, glycosides. Oil cells often contain a greenish-yellow resin, termed kawine; it is strongly aromatic and acrid; the plant contains a second resin less active than the first, a volatile oil and an alkaloid, Kavaine Methysticcum yangonin, and abundance of starch.

Preparation
Botanical extraction from whole roots, with the smaller rootlets that tendril from the main shaft being higher in active compounds. Powdered root is used to make a milky drink, liquid herbal extract, capsule, or added to a tea.

Cautions
Typically safe in controlled amounts and it makes a fine evening drink with no documented or substantiated side effects. Can be highly sedative and has been known to numb certain body parts. Excessive consumption may impair ability to drive or operate heavy machinery. Its continued use in large doses causes inflammation of the body and eyes, resulting in leprous ulcers; the skin becomes parched and peels off in scales.

Not to be used while pregnant or nursing. Not recommended to be used by those under the age of 18 or those with a pre-existing liver condition.

Sold by the 10g in compostable eucalyptus resin envelopes.