How Much Licorice Tea Is Too Much?

The widely recommended upper limit for glycyrrhizin, the active compound in licorice root, is 100 mg per day for regular consumption. For brewed licorice tea, that ceiling can be surprisingly easy to hit. One study of licorice products on the Danish market found that brewed tea contained up to 1,203 mg of glycyrrhizinic acid per liter, meaning as little as 83 ml (under half a standard mug) could exceed the daily limit depending on the brand and brewing time.¹ That number catches most people off guard, and the reasons it matters go well beyond a vague warning to “drink in moderation.”

What Glycyrrhizin Does Inside Your Body

Licorice root contains dozens of bioactive compounds, but the one responsible for nearly all of the safety concerns is glycyrrhizin (also called glycyrrhizinic acid). Once you digest it, your gut bacteria convert glycyrrhizin into glycyrrhetinic acid, which blocks an enzyme in your kidneys that normally keeps cortisol from activating receptors meant for aldosterone, a hormone that controls salt and water balance.² When that enzyme is blocked, cortisol floods those receptors unopposed. The result is that your body starts acting as though you have far too much aldosterone: it holds onto sodium, dumps potassium, and retains fluid. Blood pressure climbs, potassium drops, and the whole electrolyte picture shifts in ways that stress your heart and muscles.

This is not a subtle, theoretical concern. A systematic review and meta-analysis pooling data from multiple studies found that regular licorice consumption raised systolic blood pressure by about 5.5 mmHg and diastolic pressure by about 3 mmHg on average, while significantly lowering plasma potassium. The review noted these effects occurred even at modest doses.³ A separate controlled trial in healthy volunteers showed that just two weeks of daily licorice intake pushed systolic blood pressure up by about 7 mmHg and expanded extracellular fluid volume by roughly half a liter.⁴

How Much Tea That Actually Translates To

The tricky part about licorice tea is that glycyrrhizin content varies enormously from product to product. A strong brew of pure licorice root can contain far more glycyrrhizin per cup than a blended herbal tea where licorice is the fourth or fifth ingredient. The Danish market study mentioned above found that the highest-concentration brewed teas delivered about 1,200 mg of glycyrrhizinic acid per liter, but plenty of other products fell well below that.¹ A standard mug is roughly 250 ml. If you are drinking a concentrated licorice root tea, a single mug could deliver roughly 300 mg of glycyrrhizin, or three times the daily ceiling. A milder blended tea might give you 30 to 50 mg per cup, making two or three cups a day the danger zone.

Without lab testing your specific brand, you cannot know the exact glycyrrhizin concentration. As a rough guide: if the tea is marketed as pure licorice root, or if licorice is listed as the first ingredient, treat even one cup per day with caution. If licorice appears lower on the ingredient list alongside mint, chamomile, or other herbs, you have more room but should still be wary of drinking multiple cups daily over weeks or months. Steeping time and water temperature also affect extraction, so a tea bag dunked for two minutes delivers less than the same bag steeped for ten.

How Quickly Problems Develop

You do not need to drink licorice tea for years to run into trouble. The controlled trial showing blood pressure increases and fluid retention saw those changes after just two weeks of daily consumption in otherwise healthy people.⁴ Published case reports echo this timeline. One case involved a woman who developed hypertension and low potassium after regularly drinking up to six cups of licorice tea per day as a substitute for caffeinated drinks. Once she stopped, her symptoms, blood pressure, and potassium levels resolved within two weeks.⁵

The speed at which you develop symptoms depends on how much you drink, your individual sensitivity, and whether you already have borderline blood pressure or low potassium. Someone drinking a strong licorice tea several times a day could feel symptoms like headache, muscle weakness, or swelling within a couple of weeks. Someone drinking a weaker blend once a day might go longer before anything noticeable happens, though the internal changes (slowly rising blood pressure, gradually falling potassium) can be underway before you feel anything at all.

When It Becomes Genuinely Dangerous

At higher doses over longer periods, the consequences escalate from inconvenient to life-threatening. A case report in a German medical journal described a 38-year-old man who consumed up to 200 grams of licorice daily for several weeks. He developed severe hypokalemia, rhabdomyolysis (a condition where muscle tissue breaks down and floods the bloodstream), acute kidney failure, and ventricular fibrillation, a cardiac rhythm disturbance that can be fatal within minutes if untreated.⁶ That case involved licorice candy rather than tea, but the mechanism is identical: glycyrrhizin-driven potassium depletion.

Tea-specific cases also appear in the medical literature. A 62-year-old man who drank excessive amounts of licorice tea presented with potassium levels of 2.2 mmol/L (normal is roughly 3.5 to 5.0) and blood pressure of 180/110 mmHg.⁷ Potassium that low puts you at risk for dangerous heart rhythms and severe muscle weakness. The concerning detail in these cases is that patients often have no idea licorice is the cause. They arrive at the emergency department with cardiac symptoms, and the connection to their daily tea habit only emerges after extensive workups.

Licorice toxicity creates a recognizable pattern that includes high blood pressure, low potassium, and suppressed levels of renin and aldosterone, the hormones your body normally uses to regulate fluid balance. But because people do not think of herbal tea as a drug, they rarely mention it to their doctors.⁸ Licorice is also used as a sweetener in many foods, teas, and over-the-counter herbal remedies for digestive problems and smoking cessation, so people sometimes consume it without realizing it.

Who Faces the Highest Risk

Not everyone reacts to the same dose of glycyrrhizin equally. Several factors raise your vulnerability:

Existing hypertension: If your blood pressure is already elevated, even a modest additional push from licorice can tip you into a danger zone. Patients with cardiovascular disease face higher risk of serious complications from the sodium retention and potassium loss that glycyrrhizin causes.⁹
Medications that lower potassium: Diuretics (water pills), certain laxatives, and some heart medications already deplete potassium. Adding licorice on top compounds the effect and can produce dangerously low levels faster than either would alone.
Genetic variants: Some people carry mutations in the gene for the very enzyme that glycyrrhizin blocks. If that enzyme is already underperforming due to your genetics, even small amounts of licorice can trigger the full syndrome of high blood pressure and low potassium.¹⁰ These mutations are uncommon but not rare, and most carriers have no idea they are vulnerable until something triggers it.
Older age and lower body weight: Case reports skew toward middle-aged and older adults, and lower body mass means the same glycyrrhizin dose is more concentrated in your system.

That said, a separate genetic study looking at common gene variants affecting sodium handling in the kidneys found no significant DNA variations in the relevant enzyme gene among participants, suggesting that for most people, the issue is dose-dependent rather than genetically predetermined.¹¹ In practical terms, this means anyone can develop problems at a high enough dose, but certain people will develop them faster and at lower doses.

Licorice Tea During Pregnancy

Pregnancy adds a separate layer of concern that goes beyond blood pressure. Because the enzyme glycyrrhizin blocks (11-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2) also functions in the placenta as a barrier protecting the fetus from maternal cortisol, disabling it can expose the developing baby to higher cortisol levels than normal. Research on this topic, largely from Finnish cohort studies, paints a consistent picture of risk.

One study found that heavy glycyrrhizin intake during pregnancy (500 mg per week or more) roughly doubled the odds of delivery before 38 weeks of gestation, even though birth weight was not significantly affected.¹² A follow-up study specifically examined preterm birth before 37 weeks and found an even stronger association with heavy consumption, with more than a threefold increase in the risk of early preterm delivery before 34 weeks.¹³

The longer-term picture is also troubling. A study following children of mothers who consumed high amounts of glycyrrhizin during pregnancy found measurable effects years later. Girls with high prenatal exposure were taller and heavier, with more advanced pubertal development. Both boys and girls scored about 7 points lower on intelligence tests, had poorer memory performance, and had roughly three times the odds of attention and hyperactivity problems compared to children whose mothers consumed little or no glycyrrhizin.¹⁴ These are observational findings, and they cannot prove glycyrrhizin directly caused these outcomes. But taken together with the plausible biological mechanism through the placenta, they are enough that most health authorities advise pregnant women to avoid licorice root products.

How Long Recovery Takes

The good news is that the enzyme blockade from glycyrrhizin is reversible. Stop consuming licorice, and the enzyme gradually resumes normal function. In the case of the woman drinking six cups a day, her blood pressure and potassium normalized within two weeks of stopping.⁵ However, the downstream hormonal systems that were disrupted do not always bounce back as fast. The renin-angiotensin system, which controls blood pressure and fluid balance, can remain suppressed for several months after the glycyrrhizin exposure ends.¹⁵

What this means practically is that if you have been drinking a lot of licorice tea and you stop, your potassium and blood pressure will likely improve fairly quickly, but your body’s hormonal regulation may need a longer recovery window. During this time, you could be more sensitive to things that affect fluid balance, like salty meals, alcohol, or other medications. If you were hospitalized with severe hypokalemia or cardiac symptoms, doctors will typically monitor your potassium and blood pressure over weeks to months even after the licorice is long gone.

The Labeling Problem

A reasonable person might expect that a product capable of causing hospitalization would carry a warning label. In the European Union, mandatory labeling rules do exist for products containing glycyrrhizinic acid above certain thresholds. But enforcement is imperfect. The Danish market study found that roughly 10% of licorice-containing products sampled were inadequately labeled.¹ In the United States, there is no comparable mandatory labeling requirement for glycyrrhizin content in foods or herbal teas. The FDA has issued a general consumer advisory about black licorice, but specific concentration data is rarely available on packaging.

This creates a gap between what is safe and what people are actually told. A tea labeled “licorice root” tells you nothing about how much glycyrrhizin is inside per serving. Two boxes of licorice tea from different manufacturers can differ by an order of magnitude in glycyrrhizin content. Without standardized labeling, the consumer has no easy way to titrate their intake to stay below the safety threshold. The safest approach for regular drinkers is to assume any pure licorice tea is concentrated and to limit frequency accordingly.

Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice and “Safe” Alternatives

You may have come across deglycyrrhizinated licorice, often abbreviated DGL, sold as supplements or lozenges. DGL has had the glycyrrhizin removed, which eliminates the mineralocorticoid effects that cause the blood pressure and potassium problems. It retains other bioactive compounds from licorice root, including some with anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties.¹⁶ If you enjoy licorice for its flavor or its traditional uses for digestive comfort, DGL products let you do that without the cardiovascular risk. However, DGL does not taste quite the same, since glycyrrhizin itself contributes significant sweetness (it is estimated to be 50 to 100 times sweeter than sugar), so expect a milder flavor profile.

Some herbal teas marketed as “licorice” actually use anise or fennel for the licorice-like flavor rather than Glycyrrhiza glabra root. These contain no glycyrrhizin and carry none of the same risks. Check the ingredient list: if it says “licorice root” or “Glycyrrhiza,” the glycyrrhizin is present. If it only lists anise seed or star anise, you are in the clear.

Why Doctors Often Miss It

Licorice toxicity mimics conditions that doctors see every day: unexplained high blood pressure, low potassium, muscle weakness. The hormonal pattern it produces (low renin, low aldosterone, high cortisol activity at the kidney) looks almost identical to a rare adrenal tumor called an aldosteronoma, or to genetic forms of mineralocorticoid excess. Patients sometimes undergo expensive imaging and endocrine workups before someone thinks to ask about their tea habits.⁸

The diagnostic blind spot is partly cultural. Physicians in countries where licorice consumption is common (the Netherlands, Scandinavia, parts of southern Europe) tend to ask about it more readily. In the United States and the UK, where licorice tea has grown in popularity more recently as part of the herbal wellness trend, it is less likely to be on a doctor’s radar. If you are seeing a doctor for new-onset hypertension or unexplained muscle cramps and you drink licorice tea regularly, volunteer that information. It could save you weeks of unnecessary testing and, more importantly, lead to a straightforward fix: stop drinking the tea.

Glycyrrhizin is also present in products you would not immediately associate with licorice. Some chewing tobaccos, throat lozenges, digestive bitters, and traditional herbal remedies for cough or stomach upset contain it. Certain beers and spirits use it for flavoring. A comprehensive review of licorice toxicity noted that unintentional intake through these products is common enough that even patients who report no licorice consumption may actually be getting meaningful doses.⁸ This makes the diagnosis even easier to miss and makes it worth scanning ingredient labels if you have unexplained potassium problems or treatment-resistant high blood pressure.

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