Even a Disease That Won't Heal Has an Order — Why I Look at the Mechanism Again

If you have visited many hospitals and still haven't gotten better, the problem may not be the treatment but "what is being looked at."

The longer an illness has lasted, the less the answer shows itself when you only chase the symptoms currently on the surface. When I treat intractable conditions, instead of listing symptoms again, I first retrace the order in which the disease has progressed. In this piece I want to tell you why I take that approach, and what it changes in treatment.

Why does a "disease that won't heal" arise?

When a single symptom persists for a long time, the body stacks a second and a third problem on top of it. What began as a problem of circulation hardens over time into a change in the tissue, and on top of that come disruptions in digestion, sleep, and the autonomic nervous system. So a long-standing illness is often not a single cause but burden layered upon burden.

This is not a metaphor. That long-carried burden leaves its marks across the neuroendocrine, immune, and metabolic systems is something that has been measured, and in people with chronic illness those indices do run high. On the pain side it is plainer still. Repeat the same stimulus and the nerve itself grows more excitable, so that pain lingers and spreads even after the original injury has healed.

In this state, if you treat only the symptom on the top layer, it improves for a while and then the problem from the lower layer rises up again. This is why people say, "It only gets a little better while I'm being treated."

So I look at the mechanism from the start

I studied the mechanisms of disease at the College of Korean Medicine at Kyung Hee University. With that background, the more intractable a condition is, the more I redraw the entire path the disease has traveled.

• Where did regulation first break down?
• What accumulated on top of that, in what order?
• The symptom that is hard at the top layer now — where among these does it take root?

Even two people given the same diagnosis, if the paths they have walked differ, the starting point of treatment differs too. Only after drawing this map can you see which layer to start working on.

Where help can reach, first of all

The first thing to do in the face of a long-standing illness is to point out how far Korean medicine treatment can put a hand in your current state. If I judge that help is difficult, I say so and first recommend the necessary tests or another type of care.

Neither vague expectation nor premature giving up — finding an evidence-based direction together. That, I think, is where the work begins in the face of a long-standing illness.

What is good to prepare before your visit

• The test result sheets you have received so far (in chronological order if possible)
• A list of the medications you are currently taking
• A simple note on when and how the symptoms began and how they have changed

With these materials, I can draw the path the disease has traveled far more accurately. Do not stop the treatment you are already receiving; we will proceed in the direction of discussing together what can be added on top of it.

References

• Indices of cumulative burden across multiple systems were significantly higher in people living with chronic disease (population survey data) — Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders, 2022
• With repeated pain input, excitability rises in the central nervous system itself, amplifying and sustaining pain independently of the original site of injury — Pain, 2011

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Written by Dr. Heo Ji-young (PhD in Korean Medicine Pathology, Kyung Hee University · former Research Professor of Herbology, Kyung Hee University)