Ingredient Spotlight

Deglycyrrhizinated licorice (DGL) in Neuro Serge

What is it?

DGL is licorice root (Glycyrrhiza glabra) that has had glycyrrhizin — the compound most responsible for licorice's side effects, including elevated blood pressure and fluid retention — deliberately removed. DGL is most commonly used and studied for digestive/gastric support, not cognition.

What's been studied?

This is the ingredient with the thinnest cognitive evidence base in the Neuro Serge formula, and we want to be direct about why:

• The cognitive research on licorice is about glycyrrhizin — the exact compound DGL is defined by removing. Animal studies show glycyrrhizin/glycyrrhizic acid can reduce neuroinflammation and improve memory measures in mice.
• The human trials that exist studied glycyrrhizin-containing licorice, not DGL. Across the clinical trials reviewed by the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation, licorice was not associated with improved cognition in humans.
• We found no dedicated human cognitive research on DGL itself.

Source: Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation / background on DGL

What this means for Neuro Serge

DGL's presence in the formula is the hardest of the six ingredients to justify on cognitive grounds specifically. It may be included for other reasons (such as digestive comfort, since that's DGL's actual use case), but we have not confirmed the formulator's rationale.

What it does NOT prove

Nothing here supports a cognitive benefit from DGL. The animal research on glycyrrhizin doesn't transfer to DGL by definition, and the human licorice trials that do exist found no cognitive benefit. This is the clearest example on this site of "an ingredient is present" not meaning "an ingredient is proven to help the reason it's being marketed for."