One of the things I love most about living in New Zealand is that some of the most interesting longevity botanicals in the world are growing wild in our own backyard — most people just walk past them without realising. Kawakawa is the perfect example. And the more I dig into the kawakawa benefits being uncovered by modern research, the more convinced I am that this unassuming heart-shaped leaf is one of the most underrated tools we have for supporting healthy ageing, immune resilience, and the resolution of chronic, low-grade inflammation.

If you've ever brushed past a kawakawa plant on a forest walk, you'll know it by the heart-shaped leaves, often peppered with little holes from the kawakawa looper moth. There's a beautiful piece of traditional knowledge there: Māori healers consider the leaves with the most insect bite-marks to be the most medicinally potent, because the plant ramps up its defensive compounds in response to being eaten. Those same defensive compounds turn out to be exactly what makes kawakawa so interesting to us.

The Pharmacy of the Forest

Kawakawa (Piper excelsum) is endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand and has been used by Māori for centuries as one of the most important plants in rongoā — traditional Māori medicine. It was used so widely that it earned the informal title of "the pharmacy of the forest."

Traditional uses included poultices for wounds and bruises, infusions for digestive complaints and sluggish elimination, chewing the leaves for toothache and oral inflammation, steam inhalation for respiratory congestion, and washes for skin conditions and rheumatic pain. Crucially, kawakawa wasn't only used in illness. It was also taken as a tonic — something to maintain vitality, resilience, and what we'd now call healthspan.

That distinction matters, because it lines up almost exactly with how we now think about the role of nutraceuticals in addressing inflammaging — the chronic, low-grade inflammation that quietly drives so much of the disease and decline we see in midlife and beyond.

What the Kawakawa Benefits Research Is Now Showing

Kawakawa is a member of the Piperaceae family, the same botanical lineage as kava (Piper methysticum) and black pepper (Piper nigrum). Phytochemical analysis has identified a complex profile of bioactive compounds in the leaf, including:

• Diayangambin — a lignan with documented immunomodulatory activity.

• Myristicin — an aromatic compound with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

• A range of amides — structurally related to compounds found in kava, contributing to the calming, balancing profile of the herb (without the hepatic concerns associated with kavalactones).

• Flavonoids and polyphenols — contributing to redox modulation and cellular defence.

What makes kawakawa clinically interesting isn't any single molecule — it's the synergy of these compounds working across multiple pathways at once. Contemporary research has begun to map three of the most important.

1. COX-2 modulation

Kawakawa extracts have been shown to modulate COX-2, the inflammatory enzyme upregulated in response to tissue damage, infection, and chronic metabolic stress. Unlike pharmaceutical COX-2 inhibitors (which carry significant cardiovascular risk with long-term use), kawakawa's modulation is mild and balancing rather than blockading. It dampens pathological excess while preserving the prostaglandin function the body actually needs.

2. Cytokine regulation

Studies have shown kawakawa downregulates the pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-6 and TNF-α — two of the most clinically relevant drivers of inflammaging, sarcopenia, insulin resistance, and cognitive decline. At the same time, it upregulates IL-10, the body's principal anti-inflammatory cytokine. That shift, away from a chronically inflamed phenotype and toward a more regulated, balanced immune profile, is exactly what we want for healthy ageing.

3. NRF2 activation

Perhaps the most exciting kawakawa benefits research finding is its role as an NRF2 activator. NRF2 is the master transcription factor that governs more than 200 cytoprotective genes — including glutathione synthesis, phase II detoxification enzymes, and the body's antioxidant response. NRF2 activity declines with age and is suppressed in chronic inflammatory states. Botanicals that re-activate this pathway (sulforaphane being the most famous example) are foundational tools in longevity medicine. Kawakawa now joins that list.

Why We Built Re:juvenate Pro Around Kawakawa

When my co-founder Peter Lehrke and I were formulating Re:juvenate Pro, our flagship longevity supplement at Aevum Labs, we knew we wanted to address the convergence of immune dysregulation, gut barrier compromise, and chronic low-grade inflammation that defines so much of the ageing process. Kawakawa was the obvious botanical anchor — but it doesn't work alone in the formula.

We paired it with three other carefully chosen actives, each addressing a different node of the same network:

• Carnosic acid from rosemary — one of the most powerful known NRF2 activators, working synergistically with kawakawa on the same pathway.

• Immunel® — a clinically researched colostrum-derived peptide fraction that primes the innate immune response.

• Immune Defense Protein (IDP) — supporting gut barrier integrity and the gut–immune axis, addressing one of the upstream drivers of systemic inflammation.

The result is a formulation that approaches inflammaging from four angles at once. It's the kind of multi-target, mechanism-driven approach I always reach for in my own functional health practice, and it's now the foundational layer of the Aevum Labs longevity stack.

A Taonga of Aotearoa

The kawakawa benefits being uncovered by modern science are a reminder that some of the most clinically interesting botanicals in the world aren't the ones being marketed hardest. They're the ones that have been quietly used by indigenous cultures for centuries, are finally being validated by mechanistic research, and are now being made available in standardised, GMP-manufactured formulations we can actually rely on.

Kawakawa is a taonga — a treasure — of Aotearoa, and it deserves to be far better known than it currently is. Whether you're a practitioner looking for a botanical with strong ethnobotanical pedigree and emerging evidence, or someone simply wanting to take better care of your healthspan, this is a plant worth knowing.

Re:juvenate Pro is available here: Rejuvenate Pro. If you're a practitioner interested in stocking it, get in touch via the Aevum Labs practitioner channel reach out to lisa@aevumlabs.co.nz