Big licorice root file from Les Genser

[CHfather]

Les Genser introduced the licorice root protocol here last year.  He recently created a long document describing that protocol and discussing many related issues.  He asked me to post it, and I have done so.  You can see it here: http://www.clusterheadaches.com/cb/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1322547210

Les says he expects to be here himself in the next few days to answer questions.

[les genser]

Big hello to all.

I have to thank CH Father for posting the previous for me as I had no idea how.

Last spring I reported that I had interested a local herbalist who was on the board of the American Herbalists Guild in coauthoring a report on the licorice root protocol for publication and review; we were supposed to work over the summer, but I never heard from her despite her professed interest and I am not the type to chase anyone.

So I did it myself, and the more or less final version is whats in the link above. I am submitting it for review to the faculty of the school of herbology I am currently attending. The founder of the program is an author of international reputation and a patron saint of modern western herbology. They encourage this sort of thing, even from relative noobs. We will see what happens.

The paper was written to be intelligible to people unfamiliar with cluster, and it is as complete as I could make it.

I will make myself available for about a week or so to answer questions, take shit or both; probably at odd hours. I hope everyone is doing well.

[Lieutenant2]

Les, I will personally and publicly thank you for both this research and for bringing this treatment to us so many months ago (and for answering the 1000 questions that ensued!)

I will be downloading this file for a little light reading on my flight to Salt Lake City, but I wanted to share my experience with licorice since that last thread.

The 3x/day solution helped me a bit, but wasn't the ticket to complete relief. However, I remember somewhere in there the mention of using licorice sublingually as an abortive, so I tried that. Surprisingly, I got some noticeable results. So I started experimenting.

Long story short, my most effective abortive has been to swallow 1000mg of powdered taurine in solution, then hold a few drops of licorice tincture under my tongue for 5 minutes or so. I don't know much about the mechanism for this, but I do know it works wonders, especially about four weeks after a "bust" when the monster is just starting to creep back.

So now I've been experimenting with another licorice concoction. If one RC-seed "bust" wipes out CH for a month, why can't I space out the RC dosing (smaller doses, 1x per week) and keep the monster away indefinitely? So really, I'm searching for the magic combination of abortive + preventive. For the past two weeks, I've been grinding up about 10 RC seeds in a pepper mill, and mixing the resulting "dust" with just enough licorice extract to make a paste. I let it sit for an hour or so, then put the whole mess under my tongue and keep it there for 15 minutes or so. My normal month of peace was just coming to an end when I tried this for the first time. So far, I've done this three times in about 17 days, and I'm still relatively pain-free. Just some brief shadows easily aborted by the aforementioned taurine/sublingual licorice combo.

Not sure what I'm really trying to accomplish, other than to spread the "bust" out across a longer period at lower doses by ingesting it in a different way, and by introducing licorice to the equation as an added boost. The science is way above my head, but the effect (so far) is what I was hoping for. I think we've only scratched the surface of what licorice can do, what RC can do, and our dosing methods.

But I digress. . .THANKS, LES!