People's Pharmacy

For more up-to-date information on drugs, herbs and home remedies visit The People's Pharmacy Home Site at peoplespharmacy.us

Licorice

Posting Date: 08/19/2002

The roots of this plant are widely used, not only in European herbal medicine but also in the traditional Chinese pharmacopoeia.

In China and parts of Russia, the species used is G. uralensis; it is known in Chinese as gan cao. The scientific name for the genus refers to the sweet taste of the root.

Licorice has been popular for flavoring foods and other medicinal herbs for many centuries. Hippocrates described its medicinal use, as did Pliny the Elder.

A piece of licorice from the eighth century was recently discovered still to contain active principles.

Licorice has been used to treat coughs and colds, and also as a digestive aid.

Although licorice is best known in the United States as a flavor for candy, by far the majority (up to 90 percent) of the licorice imported into the country is actually used to flavor tobacco products.

Just to add to the confusion, some of the licorice candy made in the United States does not rely on licorice for its flavor.

A recent case of licorice overdose, however, demonstrated that the popular candy Twizzlers (the black, not the red) contains some licorice, and natural candies imported from Europe often contain licorice rather than anise or other flavoring agents.

The parts of the plant used are the dried roots and rhizomes, either peeled or unpeeled.

Active Ingredients

Between 6 and 14 percent of the root is the glycoside glycyrrhizin. This calcium or potassium salt of glycyrrhizinic acid is fifty times sweeter than table sugar.

Licorice contains a number of other triterpenoid saponins, along with plant sterols including sitosterol and stigmasterol.

The root also contains several other sugars, including glucose, mannose, and sucrose.

More than thirty flavonoids and isoflavonoids have been identified, including liquiritin and its derivatives.

Some coumarins and an immunosuppressant called LX have also been isolated.

Uses

In Europe, the primary medicinal use of licorice is to treat coughs, colds, and other respiratory infections.