working-paperBRC-2026-W0012026-08-13
When one person reports heat in the back and a deep chill in the hands at the same time, placing the experience on a single “cold or heat” axis erases its most clinically informative features: distribution and simultaneity. Replacing that experience with one thermographic image erases sensory coding, temporal delay, adaptation, and context. This problem-led critical synthesis reads Korean-medicine cold–heat questionnaires; Korean and Japanese work on cold hypersensitivity; thermosensory physiology; quantitative sensory testing; vascular provocation; objective–subjective discordance in hot flushes; neuropathic burning; and the regional, depth, and temporal distinctions preserved in the Donguibogam. Three recurrent reductions emerge: spatial reduction of whole-body cold–heat into a sum score; temporal reduction of a fluctuating event to resting skin temperature; and criterion circularity when groups defined by expert judgment or self-report are reclassified using closely related questions or images. We propose a “local thermal field” that records, for location l and time t, perceived quality and intensity P(l,t), skin temperature and its rate of change T(l,t), cold and warm detection Q(l,t), perfusion and rewarming V(l,t), provoking and relieving context C(t), and functional effect F(t). This is not a new diagnosis but a measurement grammar for separating competing explanations. The first study should not train an AI to guess disease or test treatment effectiveness. It should combine cognitive interviews, 14-day event-based body maps, ambient temperature, and standardized rest–provocation–recovery observations to test repeatability, added information, and feasibility. The contribution of Korean-medicine observation is not to replace biomedical measurement, but to preserve experiences in which different regions move in different directions and to make any added prognostic, functional, or treatment-selection value falsifiable.
Yeonseung Choe · Baekrokdam Research Commons (BRC)localized thermal sensation · spatiotemporal phenotype · cold hypersensitivity of hands and feet · thermoception
protocolBRC-2026-P0022026-08-12
Some patients continue to experience symptoms and impaired daily function after receiving a diagnosis or completing multiple investigations. These experiences arise in different situations—including residual symptoms of established disease, an evolving differential diagnosis, functional syndromes, and changes after infection or treatment—and should not be collapsed into one cause or a new disorder. This protocol proposes a way to preserve those differences while observing features that diagnostic labels may miss: sequence of onset, symptoms that change together, daily context, loss of function, and response to treatment over time. Two paths remain active. One continues appropriate medical differential diagnosis and reassessment as symptoms, red flags, and trajectories change. The other records patient-important symptoms and function, treatment exposure, and harm without waiting for perfect diagnostic closure. Contemporary research and lived experience are read alongside East Asian primary texts, commentaries and cases, and Korean, Chinese, and Japanese clinical traditions without assuming that their concepts are equivalent. Whether Korean-medicine observations add value must be tested by asking if they improve reproducibility, prediction, or clinical decisions beyond diagnoses and standard measures alone. This is a research design, not a screening tool, treatment recommendation, or efficacy claim.
Yeonseung Choe · Baekrokdam Research Commons (BRC)persistent physical symptoms · diagnostic uncertainty · multisystem symptoms · longitudinal phenotyping
protocolBRC-2026-P0012026-08-12
This protocol re-examines claims advanced in the 2012 series “Allostasis and Korean Medicine” using contemporary conceptual scholarship, biomedical literature, classical Korean-medicine sources, and counter-evidence. It does not equate Korean-medicine concepts with allostasis; instead, it distinguishes analogy, operational correspondence, mechanistic bridges, and testable translational hypotheses. Only public literature is used, and no treatment recommendation or patient-level conclusion is produced.
Yeonseung Choe · Baekrokdam Research Commons (BRC)allostasis · allostatic load · Korean medicine · evidence map
