This piece is the complete Epilogue (2) of Stones in the Body: More Frightening Than Cancer (Yoon Jong-won). It is a narrative that carries the author's academic hypothesis, and the body, figures, and citations follow the manuscript as written.
Those who have been ill know it.
How great a blessing it is for the body to feel light when you open your eyes in the morning. How thankful a thing it is for the knees not to hurt as you climb the stairs. How precious an everyday matter it is to fall into deep sleep at night and to rise refreshed in the morning. When we were healthy we did not know. We thought that breathing, that walking, that laughing were only natural. But it is only after that naturalness has vanished that we realize it was not natural at all.
This book was written for such people.
For the one who, even at this very moment, is fighting a pain whose cause is unknown. For the one who has grown weary going from hospital to hospital and finding no answer. For the one for whom the time of relying on medication grows longer while a fundamental solution feels only far away. For the one who suffers together because a beloved family member is ill.
And for the one who is still healthy but wishes to protect that health. For the one who worries about a parent's old age. For the one who wishes to hand down a healthy way of living to their children. For the one who wishes to walk, eat, and laugh by their own strength even into old age. I hope that the DIAH-7M Aging and Chronic Disease Pathway System may become a small lamp to all of these people.
For too long we have regarded calcium as nothing more than a lump of stone, a supplement taken merely to strengthen the bones. But as this book has brought to light, calcium is the code that executes life, and bone is the emergency warehouse that has saved us at every moment of crisis. To keep the door of that warehouse from opening, that is the essence of health.
And the method is astonishingly simple.
No grand procedure is required. No costly prescription is required.
Put green leafy vegetables on tonight's dinner table. Kale, broccoli, bok choy. Add anchovies and dried whitebait, seaweed and kelp. A block of tofu, a cup of yogurt, a handful of almonds. These are the treasuries of calcium that nature has prepared. Simply by choosing such foods just as nature made them, instead of processed foods, the door of the bone's emergency warehouse begins, little by little, to close.
Of course, not everyone can absorb enough calcium from food alone. As we age, gastric acid secretion decreases and the calcium absorption rate falls. Those under severe stress, those whose inflammation has become chronic, or those in whom the DIAH environment has already deepened consume calcium quickly, and food alone may not be enough. For such people, a good calcium supplement with verified absorption becomes a reliable ally. What matters is not blindly choosing just any product, but understanding the state of one's own body and making a wise choice suited to it.
Before falling asleep, take three deep breaths. It is the easiest way to prevent a state of hypoxia. Walk for just 10 minutes under the sunlight. Vitamin D helps the absorption of calcium.
At little cost, by anyone, it can be started today.
When these small choices accumulate, three gifts arrive.
You hurt less. When the DIAH environment is cleansed and the door of the bone's emergency warehouse closes, the 7M mechanisms stop. The pains of unknown cause disappear one by one, the days on which you need not rely on medication increase, and a day without pain returns.
You age slowly. The essence of aging is the accumulation of the 7M mechanisms. If you slow those mechanisms, aging too is slowed. Even at the same age you can live younger, longer, and more vibrantly.
You become happy. If you do not hurt, you can laugh. If you age slowly, you can be together with the people you love for longer. In a healthy body dwells a healthy mind.
To hurt less, to slow the pace of aging, and to live happily.
This is the single promise that DIAH-7M wishes to offer.
Of course, when medicine is needed, one must receive the help of medicine. The treatments that modern medicine has developed surely save lives and reduce suffering. What DIAH-7M proposes is only this: to move away from the overuse of medication and toward a life that governs the fundamental cause. To help one's own body find its balance. That is true health sovereignty.
Science is not cold. At the end of science there is always a human being. The wish to give the gift of a day without pain, the wish to be together with a loved one for longer, the wish to grow old with dignity. Every page of this book was written with that wish.
May this book make your day even a little lighter.
May your tomorrow hurt less than your today.
May all the people you love be healthy and happy.
That is the single reason this book was written.