Prof. Seungho Baek's Medical Insight

Tests come back clean, stress does not seem severe, and the heart still races. Four categories that sort the problem — including the awkward one KTM calls mibyeong, the state before disease. The overview article for this series.

In Korean Traditional Medicine the heart keeps a steady beat and little else. The uncomfortable racing comes from elsewhere — chiefly the liver and the kidney. Why stress becomes heat, and why alcohol and short sleep reach the heart by way of the kidney.

Colonotonia is the most outward-facing of the eight constitutions, and it receives the signal most readily. But the heat does not accumulate inside — which is why a racing heart here is less a warning about the heart than an instruction about attention.

Pulmotonia and Colonotonia are both Taeyangin, so one would expect them to be alike. In the consulting room the impressions differ considerably — and palpitations are where that difference shows.

Cholecystonia palpitations do not begin at the heart. They begin at the large intestine — and it is essentially the same story as the burning hands and feet of this constitution.

The Hepatonia heart heats easily — heat gathers in the liver and travels to it by blood. Yet palpitations rarely become chronic here, and the reason why says something useful about this constitution.

In the Vesicotonia hierarchy the heart sits in the middle — neither abundant nor short. Yet the heart causes trouble in this constitution more often than that position suggests. Not because the heart is weak, but because of what lies directly beneath it.

Renotonia belongs to the Soeumin group by Sasang classification, yet in the consulting room these patients often read closer to the metal types. That mismatch is the key to their palpitations — and to why cold food unsettles them.

When a Soeumin patient describes palpitations, the story usually begins with worry. When a Soyangin patient describes them, it begins with heat. Two routes — stomach heat and a kidney that cannot hold the base — and why the same cold water helps here and harms elsewhere.

Burning palms and soles often come back from testing with nothing found. Read through Eight Constitution Medicine, the one symptom splits eight ways — and what helps one constitution harms another. A glass of cold water is the clearest example.