What Herbal Medicine Can Help With, and What It Can't

"Can herbal medicine cure this?"

The question I hear most at a first visit. And answering it "yes" or "no" makes both answers lies.

So instead I tell people how far the hand reaches.

Herbal medicine works on regulation

Reduce what herbal medicine does to one line and it is this: making the conditions in which the body can mend itself. (What herbal medicine actually does)

Which divides where the hand reaches from where it doesn't.

What came from regulation going unsteady — the hand reaches here. Circulation, digestion, sleep, energy. And the symptoms that spun off from those going unsteady. Most of what is hard for you while the tests read normal sits here. (What "your tests are normal" actually means)

Structure already damaged — the hand reaches less far. However much you mend regulation, what is gone does not come back. What can be worked on is the environment around that structure, and sometimes that alone changes how life goes.

So the order runs like this

Some things have to be ruled out first. If symptoms sharpen suddenly, or something new appears, or weight drops — then tests come first. That is not a place to spend time on herbal medicine.

Here I often say this: "This isn't my place." Saying that is also part of my work.

Once the tests are done and a name is on it, a question remains. Namely: so what do we do with this body.

A name on the illness doesn't return that person's sleep, digestion and energy by itself. That is my place.

Why I break the word "cure" apart

In a long illness, "cure" isn't one thing.

Undoing it, slowing it down, living less troubled while still carrying it — all different stories under one word. So two people talk while expecting different things, and drift apart.

So at the start I settle which one we mean. Get that wrong and months run in place.

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Herbal medicine doesn't do everything. But that doesn't mean there is nothing to do in front of a named illness.

Draw how far the hand reaches first, then start from there.

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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)