 |
Kava's increasing
popularity around the world is directly attributable to
the fact that no other plant or drug so readily, easily,
and safely dispels stress. Among herbs, kava is one of
the very few that you can actually feel the effects of.
Nobody feels ginkgo working in their brain. But you can
feel kava, all right. For this reason, dietary
supplements containing efficacious, fully potent
preparations of kava extract are available in both
health food stores and pharmacies.
I personally am in regular
correspondence with many medical doctors around the
United States who recommend preparations of kava to
stressed and anxious patients before prescribing
potentially dangerous drugs. In the not-too-distant
future, kava will be one of the best-selling and most
widely used herbs worldwide. Almost everybody suffers
from stress, and kava is the most effective
stress-buster on earth.
Maybe we'd all be better
off moving to Oceania, living under swaying coconut
trees, catching fish for dinner, and knocking coconuts
down from trees for a snack. Instead, many of us live in
a strung-out, anxiety-riddled world.
As a result of hectic
schedules, financial pressures, inadequate sleep, family
difficulties, job demands, traffic jams, overcrowding,
social obligations, health disorders, life passages,
traumatic events, and other perils and pitfalls of
living, people find themselves increasingly stressed and
anxious. The effects of stress and anxiety can directly
damage health, causing weakened immunity, nervousness,
indigestion, difficulty concentrating, sleeplessness,
and fatigue.
The statistics are
startling enough to make you reach for a few shells of
kava. According to the National Foundation for Brain
Research, between 17 and 23 percent of women in the
United States and between 11 and 17 percent of men
suffer from anxiety disorders. That translates to around
50 million adults in the United States battling anxiety!
According to the National
Institutes of Health Office of Medical Applications of
Research, panic disorder may affect as many as 3 million
Americans in the course of a lifetime. Additionally, an
estimated 60 percent of American adults experience some
degree of insomnia.
Either they have trouble
falling asleep, they wake up in the middle of the night
and can't get back to sleep, they sleep fitfully and
toss and turn, or they lie in an uncomfortable
half-sleep and rise in the morning feeling dragged out.
To combat stress and
anxiety, millions of people turn to drugs, both
over-the-bar or -counter self-medications and
prescription tranquilizers and sleep aids. Bad idea.
Cheap and powerful, alcohol is the most widely used and
abused anti-anxiety drug. Initially, alcohol can
mitigate anxiety when consumed in moderate doses. But
the longer alcohol is consumed, the more is needed to
produce the desired tranquilizing effect.
In greater than moderate
doses, alcohol produces intoxication characterized by
reduced motor control, impaired judgment, and aggressive
behavior. Excessive use leads to addiction, liver
damage, impaired brain function, and degenerative organ
and nerve damage. Alcohol is the single most dangerous
drug on earth, bar none. It is implicated in the deaths
of tens of thousands of motorists every year, and it is
universally known for its key role in domestic and
criminal violence. Remember the Hippocratic oath: First,
do no harm. Or, how about: You booze, you lose.
What about the use of
tranquilizers, especially the benzodiazepine class of
drugs that includes Valium, Halcion, Serax, and Xanax?
According to their own promotional literature, these
drugs may be addicting and may cause such complications
as seizure disorders, vision problems, headaches,
anorexia, neuromuscular difficulties, and psychosis.
Habit forming, unreasonably expensive, and disputed from
a safety standpoint, these drugs clutter the shelves of
medicine chests and night tables of nervous Americans
from coast to coast. Doesn't it make you wonder? The
relief for a disease should never be worse than the
problem itself.
Our minds are amazing,
deep, and mysterious, rich with interesting psychic
twists we're still exploring. One area of the brain,
known as the limbic system, is a collection of organs
that keys our feelings of fear, anger, sadness, and the
myriad complex psychophysical responses that we call
emotions.
Homeostatic mechanisms in
the limbic system regulate blood pressure, heart rate,
body temperature, blood sugar, sexual impulses, eating,
drinking, sleeping, and waking. Thus, thanks to shared
neural pathways and other psychophysical factors, you
can be anxious and depressed at the same time,
experiencing fear and sleeplessness or loss of appetite
and heart palpitations all at once. Drugs such as the
benzodiazepines Deracyn and Zofran and others in
development are prescribed for both conditions, then.
According to the National
Institute of Mental Health, during any 6-month period, 9
million Americans suffer from a depressive illness,
costing the nation more than $30 billion per year. You
have to wonder, when you read these gloomy figures,
exactly who is healthy anymore.
In the limbic system, a
small organ the size of a chickpea, the amygdala or
corpus amygdaloideum--of which there are two; one left,
one right--regulates feelings of fear and anxiety and
processes memories en route to the cerebral cortex. This
little organ is a primary site of activity for both the
benzodiazepine class of drugs and for the natural,
tranquil plant drug of the future, kava. Currently, the
most popular drug prescribed for depression is Prozac,
marketed as the cheery, feel-good drug to counteract
every little psycho-emotional nuisance and dispensed by
physicians like penny candy. Kava is the safer, cheaper,
non-addictive alternative.
Excerpted from "Psyche
Delicacies" by Chris Kilham. |
