Benefits of Eating Licorice?!
Question:
Benefits of Eating Licorice?
What are the benefits of eating licorice? I know that it was taken with settlers out on the frontier, but why? How was it used to help and how can it help now?
Answers:
Quality black licorice (derived from the anise seed) is still used in traditional medicine today. We give it to some of the patients at the hospital I work at. You don't have to go to a health food store to buy it. Just make sure it is flavored with natural ingredients.
Black licorice is a natural laxative. It helps decrease the time it takes for foods to digest, and was often used out on the frontier to help 'clear out' intestinal problems. It was a way to help expel toxins, from food poisoning, out of the system. Nothing like a case of the runs to clean things out. It's the reason our own bodies resort to diarrhea when we eat bad foods. It happened a lot before refrigerators were invented.
Black licorice didn't and doesn't cure anything that we know of (despite what some quack 'doctor' may tell you). Believe me, it's been around and studied a long time. The major pharmaceutical companies would rather make a fortune bottling it than 'hide' the secret from the general public.