What is sujil?
Sujil is a dried leech. It is the whole body of the leech Hirudo nipponia, dried and used as a single drug in Korean medicine. In English it is simply called leech.
Healers use it to move what the old texts call stuck blood. In plain words, that means fixed sharp pain, hard lumps, and painful or missed periods. It was never a daily tonic.
Here is the short verdict. Its place in the old texts is strong, but good human trials of the dried drug are lacking. Long use in tradition is not proof that a thing works.
Leech products can thin the blood. So the safety notes below matter more than any claim made for it.
How does sujil work?
No one has shown how sujil acts in the body when you swallow it.
Live leeches make hirudin, a protein that stops blood from clotting. That is why a leech bite keeps bleeding. Sujil is dried, and drying breaks much of that protein down.
Hirudin is a protein, and your gut breaks proteins apart. So a swallowed dose may act far less than a leech bite does. Treat any story about how it works as a theory, not a fact.
Korean texts explain it in their own terms. They say sujil breaks up stuck blood and softens lumps. That is a traditional idea, not a lab result.
What forms does sujil come in?
Sujil comes as the dried, whole leech body. Most often it is ground into a fine powder.
You may meet it as a small dose of plain powder, boiled in water with other herbs, or pressed into pills. It is rarely used on its own. Korean formulas usually pair it with other herbs.
Live leech therapy is a different treatment. There, a living leech is placed on the skin. Do not mix the two up.
There is no standard strength on the label. Purity and dose vary by supplier.
Where it comes from:
Sujil is an old drug. Chinese herb books listed leech around 2,000 years ago. Korean medicine took it up from there.
It appears in the Donguibogam, the great Korean medical work of 1613. Doctors used it after a fall or blow, and for period pain with clots.
The old texts also warned against it in pregnancy. That warning still holds today.
If this is an emergency
Some reactions to sujil need urgent care. Call your local emergency number or go to an emergency department straight away — do not wait to see whether it passes.
Who should avoid sujil?
- Do not use if you are pregnant or trying to become pregnant. This ban is absolute: the old texts and modern practice both forbid it, because it may cause bleeding and the loss of a pregnancy.
- Do not use if you are breastfeeding, as nothing is known about what passes into milk.
- Do not use if you take a blood thinner such as warfarin, apixaban, rivaroxaban, dabigatran, heparin, aspirin or clopidogrel.
- Do not use if you have a bleeding disorder such as haemophilia (an inherited problem with blood clotting) or low platelets (too few of the cells that plug a wound).
- Do not use if you have a peptic ulcer (a sore in the stomach or gut lining) or have ever had bleeding in your stomach or gut.
- Do not use if you have had a bleed into the brain, or a stroke caused by bleeding.
- Do not use if you have surgery, a dental extraction or a biopsy planned. Stop at least two weeks before.
- Do not use if you have severe liver disease, since a damaged liver already makes fewer clotting proteins.
- Do not use if you have severe anaemia (too few red blood cells) or are recovering from heavy blood loss.
- Do not use if you are giving it to a child, unless a licensed Korean medicine doctor has prescribed it.
- Do not use if you are allergic to leeches or have reacted to an animal-based medicine before.
When should you see a doctor?
Stop taking sujil and get urgent medical help if you notice bleeding that will not stop, blood in your urine, black or bloody stools, coughing or vomiting blood, a sudden severe headache, or new weakness or confusion.
Call emergency services if you have trouble breathing, swelling of the face, lips or throat, or a widespread rash. These can be signs of a severe allergic reaction.
See your doctor within a few days if you bruise more easily than usual, your periods become much heavier, or you feel dizzy and tired. Tell every doctor, dentist and pharmacist that you are taking a leech product.
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