The Misunderstanding Behind Saying 'My Body Is Cold'

"It's because my body is cold."

This is something I hear several times a day in the consulting room. Hands and feet like blocks of ice, sleeping in socks even in summer, a belly that feels cold to the touch.

And most people are already doing something about it. Warm tea, hot water bottles, foods said to warm the body. They diligently do half-baths, too.

Yet it does not get better. It warms up for a day and turns cold again the next.

I think the reason is that the question has been placed wrongly.

It may not be a problem of temperature

The phrase "my body is cold" points to temperature. If the temperature is low, you warm it. It is a natural line of thought.

But when you look closely at cold hands and feet, temperature is a result.

If blood does not reach well to the fingertips, the fingertips are cold. In that case, the question to ask is not "why is it cold" but "why does blood not reach that place."

Once you ask this question, the answer branches in several directions.

Reasons the body gives up on the hands and feet

First, when the center is at risk.

The body always keeps its order. The heart and the brain come first. When blood is scarce or the heart loses its strength, the body first tightens the paths going to the fingertips and toes.

At such times, cold hands and feet are not a malfunction but a judgment. The body is doing the right thing. If you forcibly warm the hands and feet of such a person, you are, in effect, drawing to the periphery the blood the center needs to use.

The chronic diarrhea I spoke of in an earlier article is like this. When absorption breaks down and energy is cut off, the hands and feet turn cold at the very end. What is needed then is not the hands and feet but the gut and metabolism.

Second, when the nerves stay in constant tension.

Prolonged tension keeps the sympathetic nervous system tightening the blood vessels of the hands and feet. It is a posture of preparing for danger. There are people for whom this posture does not release even after the danger has passed.

For such people, it is not only the hands and feet that are cold. Their sleep is shallow, digestion is poor, and the chest pounds. The hands and feet are simply where that tension shows most clearly.

Third, when the tissue itself has stalled.

This is the hardest to explain, and the place I am most interested in.

Tissue that has long gone unused, tissue that has long been swollen, tissue that has long been compressed — its nature changes. It hardens while holding water, growing denser and heavier. Within it, substances cannot come and go, and nerve signals are not well transmitted either.

Such tissue is cold. But this coldness is not because the temperature is low, but because nothing is happening.

What has stalled and what has cooled are different

This is the heart of this article.

What has cooled can be warmed. But what has stalled does not start moving again just because you warm it.

It is the same as how covering a machine that has lost power with a blanket does not make the machine run. The blanket only keeps the temperature. What is needed is to turn it back on.

That is why I do not explain the treatment of such people as "warming them up." I tell them it is the work of shaking the stalled tissue so that it responds again.

• Hardened tissue is not bent open by force, but loosened so that its nature changes.
• A place where flow has stopped is not bored through, but given a reason to flow.
• Unresponsive tissue is not warmed, but returned to a state capable of responding.

It is helping the body do it itself, not doing it in place of the body.

And so the order diverges

Even for the same "cold hands and feet," the place I touch first differs according to what broke down first.

What broke down first	What appears alongside	Where treatment starts
Absorption and metabolism	Diarrhea, weight loss, severe fatigue	From the gut and absorption
Autonomic nervous system	Insomnia, palpitations, indigestion	From the tense nerves
The nature of the tissue	Heavy and stiff, does not sink in when pressed	From the hardened tissue
Circulation itself	Leg numbness, pain when walking	Vascular care comes first

The last row is important. If the calf hurts when you walk and eases when you rest, over and over, this may not be "a cold body" but the leg's blood vessels having narrowed. In that case, it is not a clinic but vascular care that comes first.

When you must go to the hospital first

Among those who come in saying their hands and feet are cold, there are cases where I recommend testing before treatment.

• The fingertips turn white, then blue, then red again (Raynaud's phenomenon)
• Only one hand or foot is unusually cold and a different color
• The calf hurts when walking and eases when resting, repeatedly
• Cold hands and feet along with weight loss and a slow pulse (thyroid)
• Numbness in the hands and feet and dulled sensation (diabetes, nerves)
• Wounds that do not heal well

Some of these can be signs of an autoimmune disease or a vascular disease. These are things you must not miss while passing time on herbal medicine.

And what to be careful of

There can be risks in methods that warm the body or forcefully push circulation.

In particular, when you strongly stimulate circulation in a state of great fluid loss, a weak heart, or an irregular pulse, the body cannot bear it. It is the same as how suddenly giving a lot of food to a long-starved person makes them ill.

There are people who find things said to "be good for warming the body" on the internet and take them on their own. Among these are medicinal materials that are dangerous to use without a Korean medicine doctor's supervision. They are ones that affect the heartbeat. I use such materials only in the consulting room, and only after checking the person's condition.

The thought "it comes from nature, so it must be fine" calls for caution.

What I leave honestly unsaid

That tissue changes its nature when it is compressed and swollen for a long time, and that in that state substances and signals do not come and go well, are well-known facts.

However, how best that tissue can be returned to normal, and what exactly herbal medicine does in that process, have not yet been sufficiently clarified in humans. I am telling you what I have observed in clinical practice, not what has been proven.

And it is not the case that I can help everyone with cold hands and feet. There are diseases that must be ruled out first, and there are things I cannot do. I believe that saying so is the beginning of care.

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When you say "my body is cold," I hear those words rephrased like this.

"Somewhere in my body is, right now, not doing its work."

Then the questions to ask change. Where, why, and since when did it stall? Once you find that place, it grows warm without being heated.