Excessive Licorice Intake Causes 10-Year-Old Boy to Have Seizures, What You Need to Know About this Candy

Can too much of a good thing be bad for you? If it's licorice, yes it can. A 10-year-old boy from Italy suffered seizures after eating licorice on a daily basis, according to a new report.

The 10-year-old's parents brought him to the hospital in Bologna after he began to have seizures. He had three more seizures in a matter of hours and told doctors that he had a terrible headache, according to a report published Monday in Pediatric Neurology.

It wasn't until the doctors saw that the kid's teeth were stained black after they discovered the cause. They had found out that the child had been eating at least 20 pieces of licorice a day in the span of four months.

"We concluded that the licorice intake could explain the boy's hypertension and we recommended he stop the excessive ingestion of licorice immediately," wrote Dr. Davide Tassinari and his colleagues at the University of Bologna in the report published Monday.

Licorice contains a substance called glycyrrhizic acid (which gives it its sweetness) that prevents the breakdown of cortisol and can raise blood pressure over time.

The doctors estimated the boy had been ingesting nearly 50 percent more of this acid each day than is recognized as safe by the World Health Organization.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the effects of glycyrrhizic acid in licorice is not a concern at the level that most people consume them, but it added that it could become a problem in the "few individuals who may indulge themselves with excessive intakes of licorice-containing candies and/or beverages."