Health Blog
Written by Dr. Heo Ji-young. Each piece takes a single symptom and follows what is actually happening in the body.
Not All Immune Cells Are Out Circulating
A raised white cell count on a blood test does not always mean infection. A good share of white cells wait close against the vessel wall, where a blood draw does not catch them, and tension or exercise sends them dropping into the flow all at once. The white cells were not newly made — the place they were standing changed.
What the Body Was Going to Throw Away Had a Use
The colour you see when a bruise turns yellow is bilirubin. It was long taken for nothing but the residue left over from clearing old red cells, and now it is read as an antioxidant the body makes for itself. The road out and the work being done lie along one line, which is why the flow of bile is not a matter of digestion alone.
Body Temperature Is Not a Number You Read but a Value You Defend
People often say their hands and feet are cold while their temperature reads normal. The thermometer shows what the body has managed to hold, and the temperature of the hands and feet shows what the body is doing to hold it. Temperature sets the pace of enzymes, and it also moves blood vessels and immune responses.
A Painful Place Tilts Acidic
Some places hurt out of all proportion to the injury. Inflamed tissue, and tissue short of blood flow, tilts acidic — and the body carries channels on its sensory nerve endings that read that acidity directly. Acid-base is not waste left over from metabolism but a signal the body reads.
Being Tired Is When to Look After Yourself
In the clinic I tell people to take particular care when they are tired. Fatigue is not one signal but several different situations wearing the same face, and the body's defences loosen along with it. There is a reason shingles comes when you are worn out.
The Same Place Gives Way at Every Change of Season
What makes the turn of a season hard is not that it is cold or hot but that it changes quickly. The body's sensors respond less to temperature itself than to the rate at which it changes. And once regulation is kept busy, whichever place is thinnest in that person shows itself first.
Some Vessels in the Body Are Meant to Leak
When something swells or weeps clear fluid, it is easy to assume a vessel has burst or grown weak. But vessel walls differ in tightness from place to place, and even a tight vessel opens the gaps between its cells when the body calls for it. Swelling is less a wall giving way than a door being opened.
Measured One at a Time, Everything Is Normal
A test measures one thing at a time. That is what makes measurement possible. But the body does not tilt one thing at a time. When several sides lean a little in the same direction, each one measured separately still falls inside the normal range.
In Winter, the Same Work Weighs More
It is not that the body spends less energy because it is winter — on keeping warm it spends more. What it does instead is hold down the share it assigns to movement. Hibernation is the extreme form of that tendency; getting up later and moving less is the faint version of it.
Autumn Dryness Is Not a Shortage of Water
Wildfires come in autumn not because the sparks grow stronger but because what burns has dried out. Drying in the body is likewise less a shortage of water than reduced blood flow to the mucosa and secretions that have turned thick. Which is why drinking more water alone does not resolve it.
Summer Is Harder to Get Through Than Winter Now
For winter, clothing and heating settled the question of keeping warm. Summer is different: the hot, humid outside and the cold, dry air of the cooling sit inside a single day, a door apart. By the time the body has adjusted to one, the other arrives.
When Spring Brings Frequent Colds and Shallow Sleep
The daily clock the body set for winter has to be moved in spring. The suprachiasmatic nucleus, which does that work, shifts only a little each day. Meanwhile pollen thins the defence of the nasal lining, and a wide day-to-night temperature swing keeps the sympathetic nervous system switched on. Three things overlap, each in a different place.