Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
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Chimhyang is the resin-soaked heartwood of the agarwood tree, Aquilaria agallocha (also written Aquilaria sinensis). In English shops it is sold as agarwood or aloeswood. Korean medicine treats it as a warm, strongly aromatic herb for the stomach and the chest.
It is given mainly for cold, cramping belly pain, for nausea, vomiting and hiccups, for wheezing and tight breathing, and as a calming scent. It is almost always used in a small amount inside a multi-herb formula rather than on its own.
The evidence grade here is insufficient: we could not find human trials of Chimhyang for any of these uses. Its standing comes from centuries of recorded use across several Asian medical systems, and long use is not proof that something works.
Nobody has shown in people how Chimhyang works, so what follows is a description of ideas, not proven action.
In Korean medicine the wood is said to be warm and sinking. Practitioners use it to "move qi" downward, meaning to settle a stomach that pushes upward with vomiting or hiccups and to ease breath that feels stuck high in the chest.
Laboratory and animal studies point to the aromatic oil. Sesquiterpenes (aromatic oil compounds) from agarwood have calmed the gut muscle of animals and made mice less active, which fits a mild sedative and antispasmodic (cramp-easing) effect. Animal results often do not carry over to people.
Chimhyang comes as wood chips or coarse powder for a decoction (a simmered tea), and as fine powder for pills and capsules. In Korean practice it is usually one small part of a larger formula.
It is also burned as incense and distilled into an essential oil used for scent. Graded chips sell to collectors at very high prices.
That high price makes fake and padded product common. Buy only from a Korean medicine dispensary or a licensed herb supplier who can name the species, because cheap agarwood is often plain wood soaked in synthetic fragrance.
Agarwood has been traded and used medicinally for well over a thousand years. It appears in Korean medical texts, including the Donguibogam (1613), among the warming, qi-moving aromatics.
The same wood is a named remedy in Chinese medicine (chenxiang), in Ayurveda and Unani (agaru, oud), and in Tibetan practice. It also has a long religious and perfumery life as incense, which is a separate story from its medical use.
See a doctor rather than reaching for this herb if you are vomiting and cannot keep fluids down, if there is blood in your vomit, or if your belly pain is severe, constant or comes with fever.
Get urgent help for breathing that is getting worse, chest pain, or lips or fingertips turning blue. Wheezing needs proper treatment, not incense.
Also book an appointment for hiccups lasting more than two days, yellow skin or eyes, black or bloody stools, unexplained weight loss, or a symptom that has not improved after two weeks of use.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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