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What is it?

The dried roots of Licorice, the graceful, long lived plant that grows to about one meter in warm climates. Licorice spreads its lance shaped leaves out during the day to catch the sun and then lets them hang down at night to rest. The roots of licorice are brown, long and cylinder shaped. They have lengthwise corky fibres, are coloured from white to yellow and are profoundly sweet to taste.

How has it been used?

Chinese medicine has used Licorice as a remedy for strength and long life for thousands of years and today it is still found in most Chinese formulas, in large part because it is seen as the ‘ambassador’, the herb that helps the other herbs to harmonise with each other and within the body.

Licorice was carried by the armies of Alexander the Great to allay thirst and provide endurance. It was similarly carried by Roman soldiers all over Europe.

Medicinal Licorice has been used for many centuries as an agent to soothe, heal and tonify. It is probably the most important herbal medicine for ulcers of the mouth, stomach or duodenum and it is hard to imagine a herbal cough medicine without at least some Licorice in it.

In recent decades an increase in understanding licorice, both how it works and what it does, has seen it being recommended for people that are recovering from overuse of steroids. Licorice has ingredients in it called steroidal saponins that appear to be able to nourish adrenal glands back to health, effectively helping our bodies to rebuild our own production of steroidal hormones.

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Personal experiences

I use licorice more than any other single herb. Formulas work better when there is a little bit of licorice in them. Partly that's because most people tolerate the taste better but it is more than just that. You can see it when you make a mixture in a glass cylinder if you add the Licorice last. All the other herbs suddenly blend together, it's uncanny.

Licorice combines with any of Echinacea, Ginseng, Hawthorn and Withania to make strengthening formulas for the immune system, the heart, the adrenal glands and the nerves. Licorice has gentle cleansing actions on the liver and consequently, whilst it is not a laxative, people often notice increased elimination when they take Licorice extracts. Firstly and foremostly Licorice is a tonic herb; the longer it is used the better it will work.

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Excerpt from Felter & Lloyd's Kings Dispensatory from 1898

Liquorice root is emollient, demulcent, and nutritive. It acts upon mucous surfaces, lessening irritation, and is consequently useful in coughs, catarrhs, irritation of the urinary organs, and pain of the intestines in diarrhoea. It is commonly administered with the addition of other agents which is the preferable mode of using it.

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Worries about Licorice

Everything you read about licorice will tell you that it shouldn’t be used by people with high blood pressure. I am sure this can be true but unfortunately what is lost from the caution’s generalisation is the rather crucial matter of the dose.

The records of how too much licorice has caused fluid retention, liver stress and high blood pressure are out there in the public domain. Each case happened from people eating very large amounts of concentrated licorice lollies.

For example there is an English product called Pontefract cakes, which is a concentrated licorice sweet first made by the Monks in the middle ages. A Yorkshire woman managed to consume 200grams of these Pontefract sweets every day for a fortnight before it all caught up with her. Even then a short stint in hospital with an IV drip saw her come back to normal in a few days. You have to eat a lot of licorice before you overdo it and get any harm from it. Something like at least 50gms daily for at least a fortnight which is just so much higher than anything we get anywhere near prescribing in herbal medicine…

All I have to say is... at the time of writing having been well over 20 years in full time practice and having used Licorice extract in nearly all my formulas over that entire time… the truth is that I’ve never had a problem with it.

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