Blog & Columns
Useful information about health and Korean medicine.
Total 207 posts
A Ruptured Disc Can Shrink on Its Own
A disc that has pushed out often shrinks on its own over time. Pooled studies put it at about two in three, and the more severely ruptured ones actually tend to shrink more. But if you can't lift your foot or your bladder or bowel control changes, a surgical evaluation comes before our treatment. We start by checking imaging and measuring how long you can walk, and if that doesn't increase, we don't repeat the same treatment.
Waking Up During the Night Is Insomnia, Too
Falling asleep but waking before dawn and not getting back to sleep is insomnia, too. It even has its own name: sleep maintenance insomnia. It isn't a lack of sleep but a state where something that should switch off at night doesn't, and often there's a separate reason your body is waking you, such as needing to urinate at night, pain or ringing in the ears. If you snore heavily, we don't start treatment; we first refer you for a sleep study. We start by measuring with pulse wave and brain wave tests and blood tests, then after treatment we measure again with the same tests and show you.
Waking at 3 a.m. and waking at 5 a.m. are different
If you fall asleep easily but wake before dawn and can't get back to sleep, that is insomnia too. But waking at 2–3 a.m. and waking at 4–5 a.m. have different causes, and different causes mean different places to look. Here's why we start by asking what time you wake up.
When Your Endoscopy Is Normal but Your Stomach Still Isn't Right
Even after tests for indigestion, more than three in four people get no clear cause. It isn't a problem with the stomach's structure but with how it moves and senses, so tests don't pick it up. It's not in your head. In a trial of 278 people whose main symptom was fullness after meals, acupuncture did better than sham acupuncture, and the effect lasted up to 12 weeks. Here's what we look at and what we aim at.
Not Every Clicking Jaw Needs Treatment
One in three adults has jaw joint problems. If your jaw only clicks and doesn't hurt, watching and waiting is usually the right call. If it hurts, doesn't open as far or gets stuck, that's a different story. When you visit us, we measure how wide your mouth opens in millimeters on the first day and tell you right then whether it's something to watch or something to treat. We handle acupuncture, pharmacopuncture, Chuna and, when needed, a jaw splint all in one place. We've seen a patient who could open only 25 mm get back to 40 mm.
Herbal Medicine for Children's Growth: What Is It Aimed At?
Herbal medicine for growth isn't a medicine that makes children taller directly. It's a medicine that clears away what is keeping a child from growing as much as they naturally could. A child who eats poorly, a child who doesn't sleep deeply and a child who is often sick are each held back in a different place. Here we explain, with the numbers confirmed in clinical trials, what we look at and what we aim at when we prescribe.
Bow Legs Aren't Just About Leg Shape. They're About Your Knees
Bow legs are usually seen as a matter of how the legs look. But in a large study, bow legs raised the risk of developing knee arthritis by 1.5 times and the risk of existing arthritis getting worse by 3.6 times. How bowed the legs look depends on both bone angle and posture, muscles and walking habits, and you can only know how much each contributes by measuring.
Spinal stenosis: is surgery the only option?
After a spinal stenosis diagnosis, many people consider surgery. However, in a study that followed patients for more than 10 years, the proportions who improved, stayed the same, and got worse were similar. Studies comparing surgery with non-surgical treatment also reach mixed conclusions. In a study that followed 378 people for 3 years after inpatient integrative treatment at Korean medicine hospitals, improvements in pain and walking time were maintained.
"I heard frozen shoulder goes away if you just leave it"
The belief that frozen shoulder heals on its own over time has persisted since the 1940s. However, a systematic review testing this natural-course theory found no evidence supporting full recovery. In a study with an average follow-up of 4.4 years, 41% still had symptoms. Meanwhile, a large randomized trial found that surgical treatment was not superior to early intensive physical therapy.
Fatigue that rest doesn't fix: is it an illness?
Fatigue is very common. In a meta-analysis pooling data from the general population worldwide, the prevalence of fatigue was 16.4%, and chronic fatigue lasting six months or more was 7.7%. Yet among primary care patients complaining of fatigue, anemia accounted for only 2.8%, cancer 0.6%, and serious physical illness 4.3%, while depression accounted for 18.5%. This means most fatigue does not show up as a disease on tests.
Chuna and manual therapy: what's the difference?
Chuna and manual therapy (dosu therapy) both belong to the family of hands-on treatments that work on the spine and joints. In international research, spinal manipulative therapy for chronic low back pain showed short-term pain improvement similar to recommended treatments (moderate-quality evidence). For Chuna, a multicenter randomized pilot trial in Korea reported improvements in pain and function, and safety data on about 290,000 people have been collected. However, no randomized trial has directly compared the two yet, so the first step is not to decide which is better, but to understand where the evidence stands for each.
Can wearing a back brace for a long time weaken your muscles?
Many people believe that wearing a back brace for a long time weakens your muscles. However, a systematic review of 35 studies and a 4-week randomized controlled trial found neither a loss of trunk muscle strength nor a decrease in muscle thickness. The World Health Organization does not recommend back braces for chronic low back pain, but it rated the certainty of the evidence behind that judgment as "very low." In spinal stenosis, improvements in walking distance have been reported.