Health Benefits & Risks of Kava Tea

Kava is a medicinal herb that can be very helpful in managing anxiety.

Before you reach for the box, though, let’s weigh the health benefits & risks of kava tea.

I’m new to kava tea. In fact, I bought my first box just for this., but I’ve been hearing for over a decade that kava helps with anxiety. I had friends back in college who took kava supplements to manage their anxiety.

Years later, my own anxiety issues have become harder to ignore, & I began looking at kava tea as a potential natural remedy. What’s held me back is this vague idea that it’s bad for my liver. Are there serious health risks of kava tea? Let’s take a look at the health benefits & risks of kava tea.

Health Benefits of Kava Tea

Kava is a non-addictive anti-anxiety remedy.  Reports describe that you have relaxed muscles, a sense of calm &, at higher doses, a tipsy feeling similar to what you get from drinking.

You can have your kava in many forms, & the studies I found looking at

kava’s impact on anxiety focused on extracts, rather than teas. This study, for example, looked at whether 240 mg of kavalactones per day helped patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). It showed promising results, but the authors cautioned that more research was needed.

Many commercial kava teas will tell you how many milligrams of kava extract they contain. The tea I’m drinking contains 78 mg of kava extract per mug, so I’d have to drink 3 mugs a day to get close to amount in the study.  There is also evidence that kava tea can help with insomnia. That makes sense, especially if it’s anxiety that keeps you awake.

The Kava Experience

The tea I drank is a kava tea bland. It also contains carob pod, Indian

sarsaparilla root, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom & stevia leaf. The bag smells unpleasantly of cinnamon & earth, but the brewed tea is mild & sweet. I enjoyed the taste.

From what I have read & heard from friends, pure kava tea has a bitter, earthy taste that isn’t pleasant. I think the sweetness from the stevia leaves & the bite from cinnamon & ginger really offset the taste of the kava in this blend.

After drinking, I feel much calmer. It’s sort of a body calmness. My limbs feel a little heavy, & my muscles release some of the tension I’ve been holding onto.

I would not recommend drinking kava & alcohol in the same day. On the

first day that I tried kava tea, I had a glass of wine about 4 hours later. It was a small glass, but I felt much tipsier & much more tired than normal, & it was in an unpleasant way.

Since I’m new to kava tea, I also wanted speak to someone who has been using it for a while. A fellow writer is a kava tea enthusiast, & she talked to me a bit about her personal kava tea experience. Like me, her anxiety has been at level 11 (of 10), & she has found enormous comfort in a mug of kava tea.

She has been dealing with debilitating anxiety, so she bought kava tea from a company called Kava King & says that it’s really helped her. Her tea is different from the one I bought. Kava King tea uses ground kava root, rather than the extract. Because it’s the ground root & so little goes into each mug, she told me that she’s not concerned about risk.  One thing that has hampered my own enjoyment of kava’s soothing effects is its potential side effects. There are some risks of kava tea to keep in mind.

Kava Tea & Liver Damage

The most serious risk of kava tea is liver damage & even liver failure.

Kava sales are restricted in Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia & Canada because of reported cases of liver problems. Kava is banned in the UK. Here in the U.S., kava is legal, but products that contain it must also carry an FDA warning. Here’s what my box of kava tea says:

“WARNING: Ask a healthcare professional before use if you have or have had liver problems, frequently use alcoholic beverages, or are taking any medication.”

The warning label lays out signs of liver problems to be aware of:

• unexplained fatigue
• abdominal pain
• loss of appetite
• fever
• vomiting
• dark urine
• pale stools
• yellow eyes or skin

It also warns that people under age 18 or women who are pregnant or breastfeeding should not drink kava tea & that excessive use can cause drowsiness.

Because of the potential impact on liver health, it’s recommended that

you don’t use kava tea as a long-term solution for anxiety. The University of Maryland Medical Center recommends not using kava for more than 4 consecutive weeks.

WebMD is a little bit more lax, recommending that you not use kava for more than 3 months at a time.

Kava tea’s impacts on liver health are on the controversial side. There is no consensus yet in the medical community about what causes kava to damage the liver.

Alessandra Potenza at The Verge looked at some potential factors that could be behind the liver damage that some kava users have experienced. Some researchers say that it’s the plant’s leaves & stems that are a problem. Others say the issue is how the extract is created. There is also a study suggesting that mold might be the real culprit behind kava’s liver-damaging effects.

It could even just be a matter of individual body chemistry. H.C. Bittenbender, a kava expert at the University of Hawaii at Manoa told Potenza, “The sudden increase in kava consumption in the Western world allowed millions of people to try kava, including those people who either had preexisting conditions, such as a compromised liver, or were just genetically allergic, genetically supersensitive to kava. So many millions of people were trying it that you’re going to find someone who has an adverse response.”

Other Risks of Kava Tea

Liver damage is only one of the risks of kava tea. If you are taking any medications, you should definitely talk to your doctor before brewing up a mug. According to the UMMC, kava can interact with:

• anticonvulsants
• alcohol
• anti-anxiety medications, like Xanax or Valium
• diuretics
• medications that treat schizophrenia
• Levodopa (a Parkinson’s Disease treatment)
• any medication metabolized by your liver

Talk to your doctor or pharmacist about any potential interactions between kava tea & medications you’re taking. Better safe than sorry!

Consuming too much kava can cause dry, scaly skin or a rash. It can also lower sex drive or cause impotence. These symptoms should go away if you stop using kava, but they don’t always go away on their own or right away. The Verge article gives an example of one patient who had to go on anti-allergy & anti-inflammatory medication for 2 weeks to heal a severe rash she developed after drinking one cup of kava tea.

So, is kava safe? From the research, it sounds like the answer is…sometimes. Yes, some people have had a severe reaction to kava, but some people also have a bad reaction to eating avocado. That’s not going to stop me from adding guac to my next burrito bowl (even though it costs extra). I’m inclined to agree with what Novo Nordisk A/S senior research scientist Christian Skonberg told The Verge: “What I think everyone should remember is this Aristotle principle that everything is a poison. It’s just the dose that determines the poison & that goes for natural products as well.”

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I find this to be very interesting information, but it sounds like the risks are too great, so I won’t be trying kava tea anytime soon. Hope this information made you think! Enjoy your day!