Starting the Jinju Dangdang health column

Hello. I am Injun Eo, director of Jinju Dangdang Korean Medicine Clinic.
From today I will be writing here. I want to work through the questions I am asked most often in the consulting room, the things patients commonly misunderstand, and what I have confirmed for myself in practice.

The greeting I wrote in 2018

Starting a blog eight years ago, I wrote this.

A Korean medicine doctor from Jinju, Gyeongnam. Jinju Dangdang will keep studying and keep working at it.

It was a short greeting, but I have tried to keep to it. Along the way I helped found the Korean Society of Clinical Movement Therapy and served on its board, and I have written papers from the data my practice produced. There is one thing I want to say in advance, though. Having a paper and that paper being right forever are different things. With enough funding, a paper showing that some ingredient helps some symptom can always be produced. So while I will explain things plainly on the basis of the literature, what I will tell you is what I have measured and confirmed myself.

Measure, treat, measure again

At Jinju Dangdang we record your condition before treatment begins. We look at how you walk and how force lands on your feet, check muscle mass and swelling, and record heat distribution. For most patients we record a pain scale as well. When treatment finishes we measure again the same way. Without a record you cannot say what changed. Saying that things are improving has its place, but saying it changed by as much as it changed — that is the way I try to keep.

Pain is a signal from the body

Pain works like a fire alarm telling you something is wrong. When there is a fire you do not switch off the alarm because it is loud; you put out the fire. In the same way, relying only on treatment that reduces pain lets the body deteriorate further. Not everyone under stress develops pain. When an asymmetrical body loses its own capacity to recover, pain repeats and does not resolve. So we do not look only at the sore spot; we look at the structure and function that produced it.

What I will write about

• Questions I am often asked in the consulting room, and my answers
• Why neck, shoulder and back pain keeps returning
• Symptoms connected to body alignment — growth, tinnitus, headache, difficulty conceiving, weight, and other conditions that are hard to treat
• Things you can check and try at home

If you have a question, call any time. The number is 055-754-9999.
Have a confident day.