Mono-Ammonium Glycyrrhizinate.
It's the water-soluble salt of licorice's sweet active. At tiny amounts it sweetens and masks bitterness. Higher intakes act on how the kidney handles cortisol, sodium and potassium.
- Category
- Compound
What Mono-Ammonium Glycyrrhizinate is, and what it does.
- Does it work
- Suits liquid and powder formulas that need sweetness without sugar. It suits people who keep total licorice intake modest and who keep an eye on potassium and blood pressure.
- How much to take
- No dose figure is on record here. What is on record is a ceiling: several national authorities set daily glycyrrhizin guidance around 100 mg for the general population.
- Time to feel it
- Sweetness is immediate on the tongue, slow to arrive fully and slow to fade. The electrolyte effect builds over days to weeks and is cumulative rather than acute.
- The first dose
- Day one is a taste effect: sweet, lingering, unmistakably licorice. Nothing else registers, because the kidney effect needs repeated intake rather than one serving.
- With regular use
- Weeks of intake above the guidance level show as sodium retention, higher urinary potassium and lower plasma renin and aldosterone. Those are lab readings, not sensations.
- How well tolerated
- Fine at the sweetener levels used in formulation. Intake adds up across licorice sweets, teas and supplements, and people watching blood pressure or potassium should ask a clinician.
- How it feels
- Intensely sweet with a long licorice finish that some people love and others find cloying. Beyond taste there's no felt effect at formulation levels.
- The overlooked benefit
- Your gut bacteria have to clip two sugar units off before anything reaches the bloodstream, so the same amount lands quite differently in two different people.
The proof, claim by claim.
These words describe the research, not the molecule's worth. Research strength is how much work stands behind one claim, and it is never a product score.
- sweetening and bitterness masking in formulationNarrative review
- inhibition of 11-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2 and electrolyte handlingRandomised trial
- daily intake guidance for glycyrrhizinNarrative review
- microbial conversion to glycyrrhetinic acid before absorptionNarrative review
- digestive comfort from licorice preparationsNarrative review
Why these belong in the same formula. Each row says what the basis is, from settled biochemistry through to a trial that measured the pair.
This is the single most important interaction for the ingredient and it runs against potassium status. Sustained intake pushes potassium out in the urine, so a formula pairing the two is not a neutral combination and potassium supplementation does not cancel the underlying enzyme inhibition. Anyone taking it at meaningful daily amounts for weeks should have potassium considered rather than assumed. The effect is dose and duration dependent.
Sodium retention and volume expansion raise blood pressure, and a high sodium intake stacks on top of that same mechanism. The two work in the same direction rather than opposing each other. This is the reason regulatory bodies in several countries cap daily glycyrrhizin intake from confectionery and supplements.
Combining the salt with whole licorice root stacks the same active from two sources and the total daily glycyrrhizin is what matters for the electrolyte effect. Formulators sometimes miss this because the label lists two apparently different ingredients. Deglycyrrhizinated licorice is the exception, since the active has been removed from it.
Marshmallow contributes viscous mucilage that coats mucosal surfaces, a physical effect quite separate from anything glycyrrhizin does. The combination is long-standing in herbal practice. No controlled work has tested whether the pair does more than either alone.
Slippery elm bark supplies polysaccharide mucilage with a physical coating action. The pairing is formulation practice with a long history and no trial evidence for the combination specifically. It carries the same electrolyte considerations as glycyrrhizin alone.
Glycyrrhizinate salts are used at low levels as sweeteners and flavour maskers in oral products. Glycine softens the residual bitterness and licorice note. This is sensory formulation and has no bearing on the physiological effects of either ingredient.
Both are used in formulas aimed at elevated liver enzymes and both have antioxidant and membrane-related mechanistic work behind them. The combination is common commercially. Controlled comparisons of the pair against either alone are thin, so read the pairing as convention supported by mechanism rather than as a demonstrated additive effect.
Ascorbate is added to aqueous formulas to protect oxidisable co-ingredients and hold pH in a range where the glycyrrhizinate salt stays dissolved. It is an excipient-level relationship. No physiological interaction between the two has been described.
Nothing specific on file for Mono-Ammonium Glycyrrhizinate. Match the label to the daily amount above, and tell your doctor what you take.
Not medical advice. Show the label to your pharmacist.What Mono-Ammonium Glycyrrhizinate actually does.
It blocks the kidney enzyme that switches off cortisol locally. Cortisol then acts like a salt-retaining hormone, so you hold sodium and lose potassium.
Your gut bacteria have to cut the sugars off before the active form is absorbed. That step differs from person to person.
The free acid barely dissolves. Turning it into an ammonium salt makes it water-soluble enough to put in a liquid.
It is intensely sweet with a lingering finish, so tiny amounts are used just to cover bitter tastes.
Where Mono-Ammonium Glycyrrhizinate comes from.
It starts as licorice root. Extract the root in hot water, drop the active out with acid, clean it up, then react it with ammonia so it dissolves properly. What you get is a very sweet white powder that is chemically the same active found in licorice.
Made from a plant. What ends up in the capsule tracks the harvest, so batch testing and a stated marker matter more here than with a made molecule.
Cultivated and wild-harvested roots and stolons, mainly from China, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. Glycyrrhizin content in dried root typically runs a few percent by weight and varies by species and growing region.
The root is extracted to pull glycyrrhizin, present in the plant as calcium and potassium salts, into solution along with flavonoids and polysaccharides.
Acidifying the extract precipitates glycyrrhizic acid, which is filtered, washed and recrystallised to raise purity.
The purified acid is reacted with ammonia to form the mono-ammonium salt, which converts a poorly soluble acid into a water-soluble article.
Finished material is assayed by HPLC against a glycyrrhizin reference, commonly to 98 percent or higher for the salt.
Sold as a white to pale yellow crystalline powder for oral, topical and food applications.
Getting Mono-Ammonium Glycyrrhizinate from food.
The whole-food sources on file. A supplement closes the gap, it does not replace dinner.
A gram-for-gram figure (how much of each you would eat to match a dose) will appear here once it is sourced and reviewed. This page will not print a number it cannot cite.
The forms it comes in.
FDA Disclaimer: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Consult your healthcare provider before starting any supplement regimen.