This morning, thanks to a friend’s post on Facebook, I read an Associated Press article, picked up and published by NBC News, that REALLY shocked me. Here’s the link: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/daily-black-licorice-habit-kills-massachusetts-construction-worker-n1240902?fbclid=IwAR1kiMGaCEQGdDrGjyVkkdy1l0MT8nNSAByFBnzqdYQFxkqYGAuQIjNgrcM

Is it possible for someone to DIE from eating too much licorice??? The incredible answer is…yes.

It happened to a 54-year-old man in Massachusetts, U.S.A. He had been eating A LOT of licorice, a bag and a half apparently!!!, every day for a few weeks before he collapsed and was taken to the hospital. Even though he was revived, he died the following day. His doctors found his levels of potassium to be very low, which is very very dangerous for the heart, in particular.

Here’s an excerpt from the article: “Eating as little as 2 ounces of black licorice a day for two weeks could cause a heart rhythm problem, especially for folks over 40, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns.”

Yikes! I personally do not care for the taste of licorice, so I’m not in any danger…But I decided to write this post as a warning to others who might love licorice.

Coincidentally, I wrote about glycyrrhizic acid in 2007 (my July 29 post) because of its anti-cancer properties, mainly. I’d seen the warnings about the low potassium problem and made a note of that in the post, and I also included this: “…ingesting too much glycyrrhizin may not be such a good idea if you suffer from hypertension, heart disease or have water retention problems.” Well, I will revise that sentence to “ingesting too much glycyrrhizin could be fatal to you if you suffer from…etc.”

Incidentally, I have noticed that many of my old links DO NOT WORK anymore (for instance, the TINYURLs that I used many years ago). I apologize for that. Over the years, I have tried and used different shortening devices because sometimes my links happen to be miles long, which I find to be annoying. From now on, though, I will probably post the full links (like the link to the above NBC article, which takes up three whole lines, as you can see. Oh well.).

Someday, when I retire, I may take the time to check and get rid of all the blog’s old links, replacing them with the original links, however long they might be. But that won’t be for a while yet, and…well…I wouldn’t count on it.  😀