Chapters
Kava (Piper methysticum) root has been prepared across the Pacific for centuries by soaking it in cold water. Outside that setting it is heavily regulated and linked to liver injury reports. This film follows the Institute's working monograph on kava and sets the traditional practice beside the measured chemistry and the clinical record.
It starts with botany. Kava is a sterile cultivated plant grown only from cuttings, and the monograph accepts only the dried, peeled rootstock and roots, because stems and peelings carry the alkaloid pipermethystine. It then covers the kavalactones and the flavokavains, and the published ratios that separate noble cultivars from "two-day" cultivars, which Vanuatu law restricts. On the trials, the film reports a Tier A grade for non-psychotic anxiety, based on a Cochrane review of 11 randomised trials, and a much weaker picture for generalised anxiety disorder, where the largest trial favoured placebo. It closes with the liver injury reports, laboratory work on flavokavain B, and the conditions Australian law puts on kava products: aqueous preparations of peeled root, with a daily cap on kavalactones.
