Can you continue to take DGL with my daily dose of prednisone?

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Licorice with Prednisone? Can I take DGL Licorice Root?

I take Deglycerinated licorice root for my stomach and acid reflux. Does D L interact with prednisone? Can I continue to take DGL with my daily eight milligrams of prednisone?

This is a really important question for prednisone warriors and before I answer it, I need to give this disclaimer that this isn’t medical advice. I don’t know anything more than what you’ve shared with me, and this is just general information. You should definitely talk to your doctor before you make any choices about your health. 

Drug Interaction of Licorice and Prednisone

DGL or licorice is a plant and probably does help with your stomach and acid reflux, but it does have an interaction with prednisone. Some people take licorice root to help recover their adrenal system if they had adrenal issues in the past and have never taken prednisone. 

I would definitely not recommend taking this combination. When you look up these two in combination with each other in a drug interaction database, it says that the problem is that licorice blocks the enzyme that breaks down prednisone and other steroids.

The licorice is keeping what prednisone or cortisol that’s floating around in your body higher than it would’ve been otherwise. 

To put it simply, the licorice is making it so your body is holding onto the prednisone longer because you’re not breaking it down. That is a problem because the longer you’re exposed to higher amounts of prednisone or cortisol, the worse your side effects are. The worse the osteoporosis, blood sugar changes, diabetes, weight gain, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease, I could go on all day. 

Essentially we want the prednisone to do its job and then be out of our system. We don’t want to keep it holding there. That’s not recommended unless you have a specific goal with a doctor that I don’t know of.

In several studies, it’s shown that it Increased the total AUC, which means the Area Under the Curve from 15% to 49%. You’re like tripling the amount of cortisol equivalent in your body by taking licorice with prednisone, and we don’t want that. 

Possible Side Effects you Might Encounter

Some of the side effects that get the worst by using this combination would include high blood pressure and low potassium. If potassium gets low enough that can be fatal and I don’t think this combination would be fatal, but it is theoretically a possibility that they use potassium as one of the ingredients in fatal injections in people who are getting the death sentence. It’s just too high potassium and too low potassium is a huge problem in our bodies. It can kill you, so it’s just generally not something you want to mess with. 

I would not take licorice while on prednisone. The jury is still out for at what point you can take licorice, at what dose you can take licorice, and how long you should be off prednisone. Don’t know that yet. 

Hopefully, someday somebody does that research, but at this point, I do not recommend this combination of DGL with prednisone. Signing off is Dr. Megan, your Prednisone pharmacist.