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.
Autumn Rhinitis in Korean Medicine: Why the Cold Season Weakens Your Guard Qi
Every autumn, cold dry air arrives and a wave of rhinitis with it. Korean medicine reads this through the guard qi (wei qi) at the body’s surface: the cold contracts it inward and thins the protection it gives. The reading points to a simple remedy — raise a sweat, keep warm afterward, and sleep enough.
Stress and Immunity in Eight Constitution Medicine: Why Tension Opens the Door to Illness
Everyone knows stress weakens immunity, but “stress hormones and cytokines” leaves you asking what to do about it. Korean medicine offers a more usable picture: stress reaches the immune system through two concrete routes — internal heat that props the sweat pores open, and a tension that hampers the body’s cleaning work — and some constitutions feel it far more than others.
Digestion and the Colonotonia Constitution: A Powerful Colon, Food That Won’t Stay Down, and the Cost of Anger
Colonotonia is built around a powerful large intestine whose overfunction is the clinical center of the type. Its digestive troubles come in two forms — food that won’t stay down, and inflammatory bowel disease — and running through both is one thread: anger, which disperses energy outward and strengthens the already-dominant lung.