Health Blog
Written by Dr. Heo Ji-young. Each piece takes a single symptom and follows what is actually happening in the body.
The Body Always Builds and Takes Down at the Same Time
Bone spends a lifetime being taken down and rebuilt. While we grow, building runs ahead; with age, taking down runs a little ahead. Growth and ageing are not different jobs but two directions of the same one.
After a Meal You Are a Slightly Different Body
After eating, a great deal of blood is sent to the abdomen, and the body puts the rest a little further back for a while. Tests are usually taken fasting, and much of the day is spent after a meal.
Lying Down Changes the Breath
Lying down lets the abdominal contents push the diaphragm upward, so less air remains in the lungs after breathing out. Feeling fine by day and tight once you lie down owes something to posture.
The Store Runs Down First; the Blood Shows It Later
With iron, the store runs down first and the blood changes later. So haemoglobin can be normal while the reserve is nearly gone. Medicine built a separate test to see that place.
Oxygen Is Not the Same Everywhere in the Body
The oxygen saturation read at a fingertip is the value of blood that has just left the lungs. By the time oxygen reaches tissue it is far lower, and it differs from place to place. Cartilage, for one, is meant to be low.
Bone Ages Differently in Different Places
A bone density scan measures the spine and the hip separately, and those values often disagree. It is the result of bone having lived under a different share of load in each place.
An Average Does Not Know the Place
A test gathers the body into a single value. Yet the same substance sits differently in the blood than it does stored in tissue, and symptoms arise in one particular place. A normal value and a sound place are not the same statement.
One Test Sees One Moment; the Body Holds the Years
Some tests do read time. HbA1c holds the average of the past two or three months. Most tests, though, measure today's value, while what troubles the body comes from time that has accumulated.
Tests Look at Items Separately; Symptoms Speak of What Lies Between
Tests examine organs one at a time. Yet much of what troubles the body comes not from a single organ but from the coordination between them — every part sound, and the ensemble out of step.
What a Scar Leaves Behind
The body does not restore a wound to what it was; it closes it quickly. What fills that gap is collagen laid down in a different weave, so the place stretches less and springs back less. Nor does this happen only on the surface.
The Body Does Not Age All at Once
Cells live for different lengths of time depending on where they are. Some places are replaced within days; others stay as they are for a lifetime. Because that rate of replacement — turnover — differs, age is a single number while several clocks run separately inside the body.
The Organs in Your Abdomen Ride Up and Down with Your Breath
You are asked to hold your breath for an abdominal scan because everything in there keeps moving. Even in quiet breathing the diaphragm travels 1 to 2.5 centimeters, and the liver, stomach and kidneys ride along with it.