Strong black licorice, "lakrids," abounds in Denmark. My brother visited me when I was living there and ate a pound or so of little, tobacco-pipe shaped licorice in an afternoon. He got profoundly ill with a racing heartbeat, lightheaded, dizzy and nauseous. I almost took him to the hospital but he refused. It took a couple of days before he felt good enough to get out of the apartment. Sometime after, I mentioned th…
In the end, I figured out that the cause was eating a big package of the same soft sweet black licorice. I even kept eating it during symptoms, making the condition worse.
My main reaction, after learning that the licorice could cause this, was how the hell is there not a huge warning on the packaging? I can only imagine how bad it could get if I had been already suffering from hypertension when eating it.