HOME >
Gastrointestinal phlegm stagnation >
About the disease
Frequent indigestion, pain in the pit of the stomach, frequent reflux, irritation in the throat, frequent burping, gassy stomach (bloated feeling), gastralgia, excretion disorder
Reflux
Continuous burping
Heavy stomach even after using the resting room multiple times
Weakness and loss of tone of the stomach
Stomach turning hard as rock
Indigestion caused by stress or slight overeating
Neck, chest, back pain
Nausea or headache from indigestion
No medication working for the symptoms
Phlegm is not a disease itself but a dirty, thick pathological substance that causes a disease. It is decomposed residue from food that was not digested, absorbed nor discharged.
It refers to murky and thick pathologic substance inside the body that has formed due to poor circulation of liquid in the body. Simply put, phlegm is like plaque that forms between teeth as food is stuck between the gum and the tooth. As minerals like calcium (Ca) phosphorus (P) get stuck to the dental plaque and make the plaque hard as a rock, tissues with phlegm become hard, and this cause pathological phenomenon.
Such phenomena are found in different parts of the body where phlegm is stagnant. Substances that are relatively cohesive such as cholesterol, heavy metal, collagen, blood clotting substance fibrin, various inorganic substances and other impurities gather around the phlegm to stiffen the tissues or form a solid. When phlegm toxins get stuck in the blood vessel, it causes arteriosclerosis, and when they get stuck in the muscle, one feels a pain in the muscle. When they get to the heart, it leads to cardiac infarction or angina, and phlegm toxins in the organs like uterus, thyroid, liver, and pancreas form a myoma or a node, or leads to stiffening. When in the stomach, the stomach also hardens.
The idea that a gastrointestinal disease could occur not from the mucous membrane but from the submucosa came after numerous clinical trials and errors. Skinny patients suffering from serious stomach problems were not able to eat, even porridge, and could not absorb any great medicine. The treatment always failed. After many months of contemplating on how to treat them, I encountered a patient in early 2003, who changed the whole story.
She was small lady in her early 60s - 162cm in height and 38 kilograms in weight. She was a patient with an advanced disease who was extending her life by administering nutrition through injection at a university hospital. When I touched her abdomen, there was no fat that I could almost feel her stomach. But the stomach, which is supposed to be soft, felt hard as a rock. It was such a clear symptom, and I could not help being surprised that the stomach could turn like a stone. What was more surprising is that the stomach had no issue medically as all test results (endoscopy, MRI) came out to be normal.
I learned three new things from this patient. Firstly, there is a new gastrointestinal disease that turns the stomach hard as a rock. Secondly, when the stomach is hardened, it is unable to digest. Lastly, such phenomenon cannot be diagnosed with any advanced medical devices. With these new findings, I started to check the stiffness of the gastrointestinal muscularis layer of gastrointestinal patients who could not find the cause of their disease through endoscopy. After looking into about 700 cases, I found that they had a hardened tissue beneath the abdominal muscle and the fat layer, and they feel pain when this tissue is pressed. It was clearly not fat nor muscle. It was a solid gastrointestinal muscularis layer that could not be observed with endoscopy or computed tomography.
As I realized that hardening is a problem of properties, which means it is difficult to detect with conventional imaging devices that is used to observe the shape, I started working with the engineering research center to create and test the machine that could check the stiffness of the gastrointestinal muscularis layer. As the result, I was be able to reconfirm that the part that felt hard was gastrointestinal submucosa. Based on this finding, I named this disease ‘gastrointestinal phlegm-stasis disorder’, which is a stiffening of the muscularis layer by phlegm toxins – a disease that is different from gastric ulcer or GERD.
The gastrointestinal mucous membrane has openings that open and close.
Fast eating, binge eating, overeating, and consumption of toxic food generate phlegm toxins, which breaks these openings to damage the layer.
-The gastrointestinal mucous membrane observed with endoscopy looks like a tightly locked fingers where between the cells are closed bindings and openings that open and close.
- These openings open when they consider the food that entered the stomach has been decomposed or is not toxic and allow the decomposed food to enter the muscularis layer to be supplied to the body.
- When the openings consider the entered food is not decomposed or toxic, they close to protect the organ from the toxins.
