Jukyeom (Korean: 죽염, Hanja: 竹鹽) is a Korean folk remedy consisting of salt roasted in bamboo. Sea salt is stuffed into bamboo tubes, and the ends plugged with mineral-rich clay; the assembly is roasted up to as many as nine times in a pine-wood kiln. The trace elements in the clay and bamboo are thought to make this form of salt more healthy. Historically, jukyeom has been used as a digestive aid, styptic, disinfectant, or dentifrice.
Contents
No systematic methodology of jukyeom manufacture, nor any analysis of its ingredients or effectiveness for any particular purpose was carried out until the publication of the book The Universe and God's Medicine by Il-hoon (In-san) Kim in 1981.
Medical claims
Proponents of jukyeom use claim many benefits of the substance. Research published in Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine suggests that 9-times-smoked Bamboo Salt had a remarkable growth inhibitory rate of certain forms of cancer in mice.
Disease treatment
According to Kim's book, jukyeom can be used to treat
- Inflammation
- Ulcer
- Others
Secondary applications
- Inflammation
- Cancer
- Others
In Popular Culture
In the movie Masquerade ( 2012 ), it is said that Bamboo Salt caused a silver spoon in a bowl of soup to turn black, but before this explanation was discovered, the event caused the King to believe people were trying to poison him. The film itself involves a body double being set up to impersonate the King - along the same lines as Prisoner of Zenda and Dave.