SEOUL, South Korea — On a Thursday in late February, Myung Hwa Jang swung her feet off her bed and gingerly placed her pink Nike sneakers on the floor. With effort, she balanced on her artificial limbs and stood. It had been two years since both of her legs were amputated below the knees, along with her right arm and most of her left hand, after an infection raced through her body following a glucose injection she received in a storefront clinic in Flushing, Queens.

In December 2013, Ms. Jang’s condition brought attention to the pervasive use by Asian immigrants — and the dangers — of using intravenous glucose as a pick-me-up. The practice is common in several Asian countries, despite warnings by governments that it is overused and medically ineffective.

After nearly a year confined to a bed in New York Hospital Queens, she returned to Korea, and spent several months in the National Rehabilitation Center here. Back at her home for a brief stay on that February day, she held a cane with her left thumb as one of her three children recorded a video to celebrate her first steps since her ordeal.

Ms. Jang had worked as a masseuse at a spa in Flushing, and, like many Korean and Chinese immigrants in Queens, visited storefront clinics for a bag of glucose when she felt run down. On Feb. 16, 2013, she said, she felt she was catching a cold. She entered a clinic on 41st Avenue for the $70 treatment, known as ringer, but doesn’t remember the ambulance ride to the hospital where she was found to be wracked with septic shock. It is unclear how she contracted the infection, but she believes the ringer is responsible.