A question I am often asked runs like this: “I have no appetite and my stomach feels bloated — can I just take herbal medicine instead of meals?” Or: “I’m too busy to eat properly — can I get by on pills instead?” To answer it, we first need to understand one of the important concepts through which Korean Traditional Medicine (KTM), the traditional healing system of Korea also known as Hanbang (한방), views illness: dameum (담음), or fluid stagnation.
What Dameum Is
Dameum is a pathological waste product that forms when the metabolism of the body’s fluids slows down — put simply, a state in which metabolism has stalled and residue has accumulated. When dameum arises, certain characteristic symptoms tend to appear: indigestion, with the stomach feeling stopped and blocked; nausea or the urge to vomit; palpitations, the heart fluttering for no clear reason; and dizziness. When dameum persists and deepens, it can even gather into a mass within the body and become a benign tumour.
The Treatment for Dameum: The Art of Emptying
Here is the interesting part: one of the most important ways to treat dameum is simply not eating.
Dameum is not a disease of deficiency — it is a disease of blockage and stagnation. Just as pouring more water down a clogged drain makes it back up, pushing more food in while dameum is packed tight only drives the illness deeper. So for a person with dameum, fasting or eating lightly becomes an excellent treatment. In fact, people with dameum often have an irregular appetite, or none at all, because the stomach’s function is stalled. It is as though the body were signalling: this is not the time to eat.
Who Can Take Herbal Medicine in Place of Meals
So, returning to the original question: the person for whom skipping meals while taking herbal medicine is genuinely good is precisely the person who has dameum. For them, herbal medicine is not a nutritional supplement but a treatment that clears a blockage. With the stomach left empty, herbs that dissolve dameum work all the more powerfully.
But there is a caveat. Dameum is not a lifelong constitutional trait; it is a temporary pathological state that resolves as you grow healthier or as habits and environment improve. So it is not good to keep replacing meals with herbal medicine for life once the dameum is gone — the body must, in the end, draw its energy from food. Taking herbal medicine in place of meals should be done only temporarily, and only when there is a clear reason for it, namely dameum.
What About Diet Herbs and Skipping Meals?
Many people worry about restricting meals while taking weight-loss herbs. Seen through the lens of KTM, the very decision to diet implies that there is excess accumulated energy or waste in the body — that is, dameum — since obesity too is regarded as a kind of metabolic disorder. On that view, replacing roughly one meal a day with herbal medicine during a diet is reasonable: it can be seen as part of discharging accumulated dameum and normalising the metabolism. Here too, of course, once you reach your target weight and the body is well, you should return to regular eating habits.
In Summary
The heart of it is knowing whether your body, right now, needs to be emptied or filled. If you feel bloated and have no appetite, don’t force food down — skip a single meal and listen to what the body is telling you. But remember that this is a temporary measure for when dameum is present; once the dameum has cleared, food itself is the medicine.
Related reading: Indigestion and Dizziness: Could It Be Dameum? · Does Herbal Medicine Make You Gain Weight?
This article reflects the teaching and research of Professor Seungho Baek, Professor of Korean Medicine at Dongguk University College of Korean Medicine, specializing in Pathology and Oncology.
