"The body constitution is determined at birth and does not change."
-Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dong-gu Lim
The Shagen philosophy is emphasized by Dr. Dong-gu Lim, who seeks to globalize the Sasang constitution by researching both Eastern and Western health methods. Dr. Lim is also the first Korean to receive a Ph.D. in food engineering in Brazil. Dr. Lim published a book titled The Secret of Future-Changing Genes ("8GEN") and highlighted the globalization of the Sasang constitution (Taeyang, Taeum, Soyang, and Soum). In this work, Dr. Lim specifically divided genetic structures into 8 types and offered recommendations on the most suitable health methods through genetic analysis. Dr. Lim, a scholar in the field of natural sciences, participated in analyzing and studying the Eastern and Western constitutions with researchers at a medical school in Brazil. "I worked with researchers at a medical school in Brazil for seven years. What I felt here was that the structures of people in the West and East are very different. Since people have differences, we evaluated their strengths in terms of health. I was sure that if I analyzed and combined these well, I would obtain the best health results," says Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dong-gu Lim.
The reason Dr. Lim studied the Sasang Constitution was that he had a real anecdote from his own experiences. In 1996, when he was younger, he was affected by a liquid food he consumed, and due to it not being suitable for his constitution, he lost about 4 kilograms. After gaining much information from the bestselling book published by academic Lee Myeong at the time, Dr. Lim went to Brazil at the age of 30 to work on body constitution, stating, "No matter how good a food is, if it doesn't suit your body, it can be poisonous." "The body constitution is determined at birth and does not change," says Dr. Lim. "Everything has its own wave, and that wave carries information." He announced this theory to the world. "Some people instinctively feel appetite when they see red, while they lose their appetite when they see blue. You can see how waves affect human appetite. Current science cannot explain the structure of Sasang, which is made of energy or waves," says Dr. Lim, who states that the world is fundamentally divided into four types of Shagen constitutions. Dr. Lim explained these eight categories (dividing the four main types into subcategories) as "8Gen" (Eight Genes). In this work, Dr. Lim also emphasized that this constitution is passed down through generations via genes from parents.
