Now, shall we look into the wisdom of Donguibogam through the eyes of modern medicine? What Donguibogam describes as deficiency and heat of the stomach can be explained in modern times as a condition called diabetic gastroparesis. Diabetic gastroparesis is, just as its name suggests, a diabetic complication where gastrointestinal motility declines and food cannot properly pass from the stomach into the small intestine. In our gastrointestinal tract, there is a very important nerve called the vagus nerve, which regulates the contraction and relaxation of the stomach muscles to digest food and send it downward.
The problem is that in diabetes, especially in diabetic patients whose blood glucose has been poorly controlled for a long time, this vagus nerve can suffer nerve injury. Hyperglycemia damages the small blood vessels supplying nerves and can directly trigger an inflammatory response in the nerves themselves, impairing neuron function. It is much like an old electrical wire where the insulation peels off and the internal circuit is damaged. When the vagus nerve is damaged, the stomach fails to move in rhythm, just like a broken motor. The stomach muscles contract irregularly or stop moving altogether, causing food to remain in the stomach for far too long.
What happens when food stagnates in the stomach? The most common symptoms are nausea and vomiting. In particular, many people vomit undigested food several hours after a meal or even the following day. In addition, it can be accompanied by early satiety, where you feel full after eating only a little, abdominal distension with bloating and fullness, as well as loss of appetite and weight loss. These symptoms go beyond mere abdominal discomfort; they can severely degrade quality of life and cause nutritional imbalance.
What is even more serious is that diabetic gastroparesis makes blood glucose control much harder. Because the time food stays in the stomach is irregular, predicting when and how much postprandial blood glucose will rise becomes extremely difficult. On some days, postprandial blood glucose spikes abruptly, while on other days it rises late, causing a blood sugar spike; conversely, if food passes into the small intestine late after insulin administration, hypoglycemia can occur. This increased glycemic variability creates a vicious cycle that complicates diabetes management itself. Therefore, diabetic patients must pay closer attention to gastrointestinal symptoms. We can understand stomach deficiency as gastrointestinal hypomotility caused by vagus nerve injury, and heat as the inflammatory response or dysfunction caused by hyperglycemia. Thus, the ancient wisdom of Donguibogam aligns remarkably with the scientific discoveries of modern medicine, which helps us understand our bodies more deeply.
