This piece is the opening part of Chapter 13 of Stones in the Body: More Frightening Than Cancer (Yoon Jong-won). It is a narrative that carries the author's scholarly hypothesis, and the body, figures, and citations follow the manuscript as written.
The essence of the DIAH-7M Aging and Chronic Disease Pathway System is not the simple single-cause calcium theory that "the cause of every disease is calcium." This system is an integrated interpretive frame that, on the foundation of the vast natural order shown by the natural ecosystem and the scientific facts validated in academia, rearranges and connects the roles of calcium, bone, and calcification through the author's own distinctive perspective, and thereby lets us read the hidden side of life and disease as a single story.
The New Map That Threaded Scattered Puzzle Pieces into One
The greatest value of this theory does not lie in the discovery of a new substance or a new disease name. It lies in the fact that it created a new perspective that threads the scattered facts into a single flow.
The history of the sea and calcium, of shells and skeletons, that evolutionary biology has revealed. The mechanism of hormones and homeostasis that endocrinology has elucidated. The correlation between calcification and chronic disease that pathology has observed. Until now these have been explained separately, in different textbooks, on the islands of different disciplines. In the clinical field, too, hypertension, arthritis, dementia, and diabetes have often been divided and managed as if they were diseases of separate islands.
This book places that scattered knowledge back onto the six-stage structure of nature's great cycle: birth, growth, reproduction, decline, death, and return. And by binding the common pathway that runs through it into a single language called DIAH-7M, it provides a single clear map by which one can work through the complex maze of disease.
To put it as an analogy, it is like this. If the genome map that humanity completed is the "innate blueprint of life" that analyzed the composition of the cell, then the DIAH-7M map presented here is the "operating chart of living life" that shows how that life actually moves, ages, and collapses as it collides with its environment. The meaning of these two maps and their combination will be dealt with in detail later.
Then what are the core elements that make up this map? It begins from looking at three substances, bone, calcium, and calcification, with an entirely new gaze.
Reinterpreting the Core Substances: The True Faces of Bone, Calcium, and Calcification
The greatest originality of this system is that it looked at the three core substances we already believed we knew, bone, calcium, and calcification, with an entirely different gaze and redefined them functionally. And this reinterpretation provides an insight that goes beyond individual health and encompasses even the recovery of the health of the earth, which is falling ill through industrialization and environmental destruction.
First, Bone: Not a Support, but the "Emergency Warehouse of Life"
In conventional belief, bone was regarded as the skeleton that stands the body up, or at best a warehouse that stores calcium. But from the perspective of this book, bone is the final emergency warehouse that, at every moment of DIAH crisis when blood calcium concentration drops, inflammation spreads, body fluids tilt toward acidity, and cells and tissues fall into a hypoxic state, shaves off a little of itself and sends out calcium, and it is the life fund set aside to prolong life. Therefore osteoporosis must be read not as a simple aging phenomenon but as a withdrawal record that shows how fiercely, over a long time, my body has opened the door of this warehouse and waged its struggle for survival.
[Conventional Belief] Bone is the "skeleton" that supports the body, or a simple "calcium storehouse"
[Redefinition] Bone is the "final emergency warehouse" and "life fund" that dissolves itself at every moment of DIAH crisis to save life. Osteoporosis is not a simple aging phenomenon but the "withdrawal record" of the struggle for survival in which my body has opened the warehouse that fiercely.
Second, Calcium: The Six-Stage Execution Code of the Cycle of Life
Calcium has until now been recognized as a nutrient, a mineral, something taken in order to make bones strong. But this book redefines calcium not as a simple nutrient but as the execution code that nature uses each time it runs the six stages of the cycle of life. And this code operates as six keys according to the life cycle.
At the very moment sperm meets egg and fertilization occurs, an intense calcium wave rises inside the cell and opens the door of life. This is the birth key. In the growth period it operates as the growth key that firmly builds up bone and organs and grows the body, and in the reproductive period as the maintenance key that maintains reproductive function and helps carry on the next generation.
Up to here the direction is one that saves and expands life. But once aging begins and DIAH worsens, the aspect changes. The calcium that has come out of the bone's emergency warehouse becomes the decline key that hardens muscles and blood vessels, organs and cells, preparing for the return to nature. Next it changes into the death key that flows in massively into the cell, halts its function, and switches off the heart and the brain. In the end the calcium of the skeletal remains returns to soil and sea and finishes its role as the return key that becomes the material for the next generation.
In this way calcium is a double-edged sword that both saves life and closes it. Understanding this flow is precisely the core of designing a healthy lifespan and slow aging.
[Conventional Belief] Calcium is a simple "nutrient" or "mineral" taken in to make bones strong
[Redefinition] Calcium is the "life-cycle execution code" that nature uses each time it runs the six stages of the cycle of life (birth, growth, reproduction, decline, death, return). This code operates at each stage as the birth key, growth key, maintenance key, decline key, death key, and return key, and is a "double-edged sword" that both saves life and closes it.
Birth period (birth key): at the moment sperm meets egg and fertilization occurs, a calcium wave rises and opens the door of life.
Growth period (growth key): the architect that firmly constructs bone and organs and grows the body.
Reproductive period (maintenance key): at the peak of growth, it maintains vitality and leads the reproductive activity that carries on the next generation (the direction that "saves" life).
Decline period (decline key): once aging begins, it comes out of the emergency warehouse and hardens the body, preparing to return to nature.
Death period (death key): it flows in massively into the cell, halts function, and closes the structure (cardiac arrest and death).
Return period (return key): the calcium of the skeletal remains returns to soil and sea and becomes the material for the next generation.
Third, Calcification: Not Dregs, but the "Raw Material of the Pathological Mechanism" and a "Coordinate"
In the conventional view, the calcification and stones that form throughout the body in blood vessels, joints, organs, and so on were regarded as at best stones, dregs, byproducts that inevitably form with age. In many cases they were treated as an incidental phenomenon rather than the center of disease.
This book overturns that conventional belief. When it comes out of the bone it is an emergency medicine that saves life, but what remains after it has finished its role becomes poison and piles up as calcification. This calcification is the actual raw material by which the calcium that came out of the emergency warehouse during the decline period accelerates the pathological mechanism running from 1M to 7M. At the same time it is the coordinate of pathology and the warning signal that tells us in which part of the body, and how far, collapse has progressed.
In other words, that calcification is visible somewhere in my body is not simply that a single lump of stone has formed. It is a living record showing how long and how often that spot has been under attack from the bone emergency medicine calcium within the DIAH environment.
[Conventional Belief] The calcification or stones that form in the body are simple "waste" or "dregs" that appear with age
[Redefinition] When it comes out of the bone it is an "emergency medicine" that saves life, but what remains after it has finished its role becomes "poison" and piles up as calcification. This calcification is the "actual raw material" that accelerates the 1M to 7M pathological mechanism, and the calcification found here and there in my body is the "coordinate of pathology" and the "warning signal" that shows how far collapse has progressed.
Now we have confirmed the true faces of the three core substances: bone, calcium, and calcification. This new understanding of these substances becomes the key to healing not only the diseases of my body but also the earth, which is falling ill by the very same principle. That connecting link will be dealt with in detail later.
Then through what pathway do these substances actually create disease? In the next chapter we will look concretely at how the DIAH trigger opens the door of the emergency warehouse, and how the leaked calcium tears the body down through the 7M mechanism.
The Pathway of Disease: The Door DIAH Opens, the Body 7M Tears Down
Within this frame the causal relationship of chronic disease is clearly organized, beyond the vague impression that "there are so many causes that it is complicated," into the structure of "environment (cause) → trigger → mechanism (execution)."
In the past, stress, bad eating habits, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, environmental toxins, infection, and so on were each explained separately. But this book holds that all of these factors, in the end, create four common environments within the body: D (Deficiency), I (Inflammation), A (Acidosis), H (Hypoxia).
This DIAH state is precisely the trigger environment that forcibly opens the door of the bone emergency warehouse. The more deficiency worsens, the longer inflammation lasts, the more body fluids tilt toward acidity, the more tissue falls into a hypoxic state, the more the body is designed to take calcium out of the bone and use it "in order to live right now."
The problem is what comes after. The calcium that pours out when the door of the warehouse opens, that is, the emergency medicine, in the early stage contributes to saving the heart and the brain, maintaining blood pressure, and getting through the crisis situation. But the calcium that remains and drifts after it has finished its role, and the calcification that has hardened,
tear the body down slowly but tenaciously along the pathological mechanism running from 1M to 7M. These seven mechanisms do not proceed in order; depending on an individual's constitution and environment they proceed singly, or several mechanisms in sequence, or in overlapping and compound fashion.
The waste heat and inflammation that overheat cellular metabolism (1M),
the dulling that lowers the function of joints, muscles, and valves (2M),
the wearing down that exhausts tissue through repeated stimulation (3M),
the hardening that makes blood vessels and tissue rigid and stiff (4M),
the overflow in which calcium out of control floods the cells and the whole body and accelerates calcification (5M),
the disconnection that blocks nerves and blood vessels and cuts off the signals of life (6M),
the collapse in which holes form in the bone and it caves in so that structure and function break down completely (7M)
unfold at each one's own speed and in each one's own combination.
[DIAH Calcium Efflux Trigger]
Once the DIAH environment is formed, the body has no choice but to open the door of the bone emergency warehouse for survival.
| Abbreviation | English | Korean | Action | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D | Deficiency | 결핍 | Bone calcium fills the shortfall | Deficiency of calcium and minerals, vitamin D, etc. → calcium is broken down from the bone to supplement → into the blood → supplied to various cells ※ Common: D, I, A, and H all induce a drop in blood calcium, which is supplemented by calcium breakdown from the bone. |
| I | Inflammation | 염증 | Calcium is mobilized to quell inflammation | Massive consumption of calcium in the inflammatory response → calcium is broken down from the bone to supplement → into the blood → concentrated at the site of inflammation |
| A | Acidosis | 산증 | Bone is sacrificed to neutralize acid | Alkaline calcium is used to neutralize acid → calcium is broken down from the bone to supplement → into the blood → whole-body pH balance |
| H | Hypoxia | 저산소 | With lack of oxygen, calcium flows excessively into the cell | Cellular oxygen shortage → calcium pump failure → blood calcium is over-absorbed into the cell → blood calcium shortage → calcium is broken down from the bone to supplement → into the blood → reabsorbed into the damaged cell → vicious cycle |
[7M Pathological Mechanism]
The emergency-medicine calcium that pours out once the door of the bone emergency warehouse opens saves life in the early stage, but the remaining calcium and calcification tear the body down along seven pathological mechanisms (1M to 7M).
This mechanism, running through waste heat, dulling, wearing down, hardening, overflow, disconnection, and collapse, does not necessarily proceed in order; depending on an individual's constitution and environment it proceeds singly or in overlapping and compound fashion.
| Mechanism | Korean Name | English Name | Action | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1M | 폐열 | Obstruction & Rupture | It blocks and bursts | Calcification deposition → luminal obstruction, stenosis, infarction, rupture, hemorrhage |
| 2M | 둔화 | Dysfunction | It grows dull | Calcification deposition → dulling of the movement of joints/muscles/valves, decline in contraction/relaxation function |
| 3M | 피폐 | Coating & Blocking | It is coated and blocked | Calcification deposition → receptor blockade, signal blockade, secretion blockade, insulin resistance |
| 4M | 경화 | Hardening | It hardens | Calcification deposition → fibrosis, calcification, rigidity, loss of elasticity |
| 5M | 범파 | Overflow & Burst | It overflows and bursts | Excessive calcium influx → cell overproliferation, hypertrophy, tumor, expansion, apoptosis |
| 6M | 단절 | Disconnection | It is cut and severed | Calcification deposition → nerve disconnection, vascular occlusion, tissue necrosis, apoptosis |
| 7M | 붕괴 | Collapse | It falls apart | Calcium shortage → structural collapse of hard tissue (bone, teeth) |
Up to now we have looked at how DIAH opens the door of the bone, and how the leaked calcium tears the body down through the 7M mechanism. But here one fundamental question remains. Why calcium of all things? Why did nature choose calcium? To answer this question we must turn our gaze beyond the individual body, to the history of several billion years of the evolution of life.
Calcium Is Not a Simple Lump of Stone but the Execution Code of the Cycle of Life That Nature Designed
This DIAH-7M system inside the human body goes beyond the health problem of the individual and touches upon the operating principle of great nature that has continued for several billion years. This book does not see calcium simply as a mineral component that makes up bone.
We newly define calcium as the execution code that connects soil and life, life and death, past and future, and that cycles the entire ecosystem and evolves life.
In Chapter 2 we confirmed that calcium is the code that runs the individual's life cycle. Now, expanding that field of view, we look at how calcium is an even greater execution code that runs through the history of the evolution of life and through the entire earth's ecosystem.
And the true possibility this discovery holds lies here. The principle of the calcium cycle that DIAH-7M has elucidated is the only key that can simultaneously recover the health of humans suffering from modern diseases and chronic illness, and the health of the earth, which is falling ill through industrialization and environmental destruction.
First, Calcium Is Not a Simple Lump of Stone but the Execution Code of Structural Evolution
The answer lies within the history of evolution. That nature chose calcium is not a coincidence but is because of the unrivaled properties that only this substance possesses.
We have regarded bone and shell merely as accessories of the organism. But in the history of evolution calcium had an entirely different face.
It was the shield of survival that triggered the Cambrian explosion and clothed mollusks in hard armor (the exoskeleton). It was the structural revolution that let vertebrates overcome gravity and climb onto land. It was the core medium of information transmission that, through the conduction of nerve signals, gave birth to the brain and higher intelligence.
Nature granted dominion of the land and higher intelligence only to species that could accumulate calcium within the body and control it precisely. Calcium is not a simple lump of stone but the execution code of evolution that nature chose in order to upgrade the organism into a more complex and powerful being.
[Conventional Belief] Calcium is a passive "construction material" and inorganic component that makes bone or shell hard
[Redefinition] Calcium is the "driving force of structural evolution" that made possible the Cambrian explosion, the advance of vertebrates onto land, and the birth of the brain and higher intelligence. It is the "execution code of evolution" that nature chose in order to upgrade the organism.
"Darwin's theory of evolution, its decisive operating principle" "The gene is only a blueprint; the execution code of evolution is 'calcium'"
Second, Calcium Is the Wheel That Rolls the Great Cycle of the Ecosystem
Academia has long known the law of the great ecosystem cycle: that every organism follows the immense cycle of birth, growth, reproduction, decline, death, and return, and in the end comes from soil and returns to soil. But it could not clearly elucidate what the concrete medium is that actually leads that six-stage process and transmits energy across the boundary between the nonliving (soil) and the living (body).
This book reveals that the substance of that vague connecting link is precisely calcium. Calcium begins in the process by which rock weathers and becomes soil (return), enters the bodies of plants and animals and sprouts and grows life (birth, growth, reproduction), leaves the body along with aging (decline, death), and returns to soil once more. In all of this process calcium is not a simple component but the wheel that executes the cycle.
[Conventional Belief] The phenomenon that the ecosystem cycles through the process of birth, growth, reproduction, decline, death, and return was known, but the elucidation of the concrete substance that physically mediates and connects that process was absent
[Redefinition] Calcium is the "wheel of the ecosystem" that ceaselessly moves from the nonliving (soil) to life (plants and animals) and back to nature, actually rolling the six-stage great cycle, and it is the "great-cycle execution code" that completes the cycle and evolution of the natural ecosystem.
Third, the Human Being Is a Being That Holds the Primordial Sea, a "Walking Sea"
From the very moment, deep in the sea, when the mollusk first gathered calcium carbonate to protect its soft body and made a hard shell, to the moment when the vertebrate climbed onto land and raised a massive framework of bone, and on to the present human being. Every living thing on earth is under the command of the great "life execution code" called calcium.
We often call the human being the lord of all creation and try to regard it as a special being set apart from nature. But the human being, viewed physiologically from the perspective of this system, is merely a "walking sea." When the primordial organism climbed onto land, it did not abandon the sea environment for the sake of survival. It is because, in order to survive on the barren land, it moved the primordial sea whole into the body in the form of bone (the internal rock) and blood (the internal sea).
Therefore the six-stage calcium cycle that occurs within the human body (birth, growth, maintenance, decline, death, return) is not the human being's alone. This is the "evolutionary constitution" of great nature that every organism, from the coral reef of the sea to the elephant of the grassland, shares in order to preserve its species.
[Evidence of the Six-Stage Calcium Cycle Seen Through the Stages of Evolution]
This immense law of the calcium cycle is confirmed here and there in the history of life as follows.
Mollusks and coral (the beginning of defense): clams, conches, and coral first used the calcium in the sea to build a hard house (Shell) that protects their own bodies. This is the most primitive use of calcium, protecting oneself from external enemies through the growth key.
Crustaceans (moving armor): crabs, lobsters, and shrimp put on a hard exoskeleton (Exoskeleton) of calcium and secured both defense and mobility at the same time. The molting process, in which each time they grow they shed the shell and fill it with calcium again, strikingly shows the growth-maintenance stage of the cycle of life.
Birds and reptiles (the advance onto land): turtles, eagles, and ostriches, thanks to the hard eggshell made of calcium, were able to conceive life even on land where there is no water. That is, calcium as the birth key was the foremost contributor that made life leave the sea and advance onto land.
Mammals and the human being (the internal sea and the bone warehouse): the human being, the whale, and the elephant hide bone inside the body (the endoskeleton) and store calcium within it to support their huge bodies and maintain the homeostasis of the blood. The process by which the calcium in the mother's bone is transmitted to the offspring through milk is the most elaborate example showing how the maintenance (reproduction) key and the return (next generation) key operate.
[Conventional Belief] The human being is an independent organism adapted to the land environment, and the connection with the sea is nothing more than the evolutionary past
[Redefinition] The human being is a "walking sea" that moved the primordial sea whole into the body in the form of bone (the internal rock) and blood (the internal sea). The calcium cycle within the human body is the "constitution of nature" onto which the several-billion-year evolutionary program is projected.
Fourth, the Fractal of Suffering: The Earth's Osteoporosis and the Pain in My Body
In this chapter we must confront the most shocking and grave fact. It is precisely the fact that the pain of the earth and the pain of my body resemble each other to an astonishing, no, to a chilling degree. We call this the fractal of suffering, in which the part and the whole have the same structure.
Look out the window now. What is the essence of the crisis the earth is going through? It is not simply that the temperature is rising. Because of the carbon and pollutants that humans have spewed out, the sky is acidified and acid rain pours down on the land.
When this acid rain touches it, the soil, in order to neutralize itself, dissolves the calcium (the mineral of rock) it was holding and rapidly washes it away to rivers and the sea. The land that has lost calcium, its supporting foundation, cracks and splits apart, becomes desert, becomes dead soil that has lost its vitality. This is plainly the earth's osteoporosis.
Now turn your gaze to the inside of your body. The situation is essentially the same. Excessive stress, processed food, sugar, and the polluted environment acidify the blood, the sea within our body.
At this point our body rings the emergency bell for the sake of survival. It urgently dissolves out of the bone the only substance that can neutralize the blood turned acidic, alkaline calcium. The calcium that comes out of the bone is at first an emergency medicine that saves life. But the calcium that remains and drifts after it has finished its role becomes poison and piles up as calcification. As a result, holes are punched throughout the bone, the pillar of my body, the calcification turned to poison blocks the blood vessels, and the body slowly caves in. This is precisely the starting point of the 7M mechanism (waste heat, dulling, wearing down, hardening, overflow, disconnection, collapse) that we looked at earlier.
My bone is the living rock of the earth, and the rock of the earth is my sleeping bone. That is why the earth and the human being suffer by the very same chemical principle and fall ill for the very same reason.
[Conventional Belief] The environmental problem and the individual's health problem are separate domains, and the illness of the earth and the illness of the human being have different causes and mechanisms
[Redefinition] The earth and the human being share the identical pathological pathway of "acidification → calcium efflux → structural collapse." The earth's osteoporosis and the human being's osteoporosis are a "fractal of suffering" that proceeds by the very same chemical principle.