Kokua Botanicals 

People have asked me why I created Kokua Nasal Spray.  The answer is survival.  Like many people, I suffer from arthritis in my shoulder and my back.  For years I relied on ibuprofen and aspirin to reduce the inflammation and ease the pain.  I also relied on those two items to help with muscle strains.  About 5 years ago, I was diagnosed with arterial fibrillation (AFIB).  My doctor put me on warfarin, a blood thinner, and then politely told me that I could no longer take either ibuprofen or aspirin for my arthritis or muscle strains as those medicines interfere with warfarin.  When I asked him what medicine I could take for the inflammation and pain, he said there were none that he knew of. 

 

That information put me into survival mode.  My first idea was to get a medical marijuana card and try using marijuana.  Unfortunately, I am at the age where we consider marijuana as a recreational substance used only to get high and that it had no medicinal purpose.  Then a friend told me about hemp oil and said that I could get it at Walmart or on Amazon.

 

That started me researching hemp oils.  The first thing I found was that hemp oil works its magic on different parts of the brain than marijuana and therefore cannot get you high.  I liked that idea, so I kept researching.  By this time the friend who told me about hemp oil was no trying CDB hemp oil.  One day while I was complaining about my shoulder pain, he gave me the CDB lip balm that he was using and suggested that I give it a try.  He gave me the new lip balm he had in his car and I immediately applied it to my lips.  The lip balm had no label on it but he told me it was good stuff so I kept it.  I used the lip bawl 3 or 4 times that day and by the evening, my shoulder no longer hurt and that night I was able to sleep without being awakened by shoulder pain.

 

I became a little unsure about using the lip balm as I had no idea of how much CDB was in the entire tube, let alone how much I was using per application.  I thought there had to be a better way.  That is when my research led me to water soluble CDB nano emulsions.  Regular CDB oil is a thick and sticky substance, which it my opinion, did not lend itself to controlling potency or delivery.  The nano emulsions were available in either powder or liquid form and were, again in my opinion, easy to work with.  They could be used in beverages, food, cosmetics, and as sprays.  

 

After a couple failed attempts to develop a beverage drink and to make gummy-bears, I finally realized that the best way for me to control the potency of my product was to create a nasal spray.  Finding the bottle was easy.  The sprayer took a little more research.  I finally found a manufacturer that had a metered nasal spray.  The metered nasal spray delivered 0.1mls per spray.  

 

The final product – Kokua Nasal Spray.  

 

We use a 0.50 fluid ounce -15ml bottle.  We fill that bottle with a mixture of distilled water, 150 mgs of full spectrum nano emulsion CDB oil, sea salt, peppermint oil, and fractionated coconut oil.  150 mgs of CDB oil in a 15ml bottle yields 10mgs per ml.

 

We then add our metered sprayer.  The metered sprayer delivers 0.1mls of product.  0.1ml delivery x 10mgs of CDB oil per ml yields about 1mg of CDB oil per spray.

 

SUCCESS (at least in my eyes) a product where you know the total amount of CDB oil in the bottle and how much is delivered in each spray.  That is how and why Kokua Nasal Spray was developed.

 

WHAT DOES KOKUA MEAN? I have always loved the relaxed feeling that I get when I visit Maui.  The people are so helpful and kind.  When naming my nasal spray, I wanted to give it a name that reflected that feeling. In the Hawaiian culture, Kokua is the word used to describe the spirit of kindness accompanied by a desire to help one another. That is what I hope my nasal spray does for people so I decided to name it Kokua.