A packet of herbal decoction holds 10 to 30 calories — less than almost anything else you drink. So when weight rises during a course of herbal medicine, the herbs are rarely the cause. The real reasons are more interesting, and mostly good news.
Why Chewing Matters — and How Refined Carbs and Liquid Fructose Undo It
Most of us treat chewing as a trivial first step of digestion. Korean Medicine’s classic texts saw it as a source of the body’s very energy — and modern research ties it to brain blood flow and cognition. Refined carbohydrates and liquid fructose quietly strip that benefit away by needing almost no chewing at all.
A Sweet Taste in Your Mouth on an Empty Stomach: What Korean Medicine Reads Into It
Sometimes a taste appears in the mouth when you have eaten nothing at all — bitter, sour, or sweet. Korean Medicine reads these as signals of imbalance among the five organs. A sweet taste on an empty stomach, in particular, points to heat in the spleen — and can be an early sign of a blood-sugar problem.
Stress and False Hunger: Four Korean-Medicine Reasons You Eat When You’re Not Hungry
Reaching for food under stress is not simply a failure of willpower. Korean Medicine reads “false hunger” as a signal of imbalance — and traces it to a mismatch between the liver and the digestive organs that shows up in four distinct patterns, each with its own cravings.
GLP-1 Drugs and the Pancreas: A Korean Medicine View of an Overworked Organ
GLP-1 weight-loss drugs put the pancreas into a kind of forced booster mode — squeezing out insulin as if you had just overeaten, even when almost no food has come in. Korean Medicine reads the resulting strain through one idea: overwork. Here is how to support the organ while you take them.
Lupus and the Difference Between Men and Women: A Korean Medicine View of Qi and Blood
Lupus strikes women roughly ten times as often as men. That lopsided ratio is a clue, and Korean Traditional Medicine reads it through the lens of qi and blood — a physiological difference between the sexes that, in this framing, tilts women toward the pattern the disease seems to grow from.
Asset Bubbles and the Body’s Inflammation: Two Faces of the Same Signal
An economic bubble and the body’s inflammation look like problems to be stamped out. Seen differently, both are the same thing: a surge of concentrated resources rushing to where a problem needs solving. Suppress either without understanding why it arose, and the real trouble only returns, larger.
Eating When You Have a Cold or Flu: Why Less Often Beats More (Eight Constitutions)
We are taught to eat well when we are sick. But during an acute infection, eating the same as usual — or a little less — tends to serve recovery better than eating more, because digestion is work and overeating turns the body into friendly ground for microbes. How much less depends on your constitution.
Baths and Colds by Constitution: Who Should Sweat It Out, and Who Shouldn’t (Eight Constitutions)
A cold runs through a fixed set of reactions — fever, aches, cough — and letting them happen well is how you beat it. Korean medicine treats sweating as central to that, and a warm bath is the simplest tool. But how much to sweat depends on your constitution: some types thrive on a full hot sweat, while others must keep it light and finish lukewarm.
The Brain in Korean Medicine: The Sea of Marrow and Its Roots in the Five Organs
Korean Traditional Medicine gives the brain a name that sounds strange to modern ears: the sea of marrow. Built from food through qi, blood, essence, and marrow, and expressing the work of the five organs, the brain is best understood not in isolation but through the organs that feed and steady it.