Weight Loss With Acupuncture – Can Acupuncture Help You Lose Weight?
In recent years, more and more people are trying out acupuncture to lose weight. Just what is acupuncture? How could your medical practice partner with acupuncture specialists and educate your patients about acupuncture? Let USP Healthcare guide you through some of the details.
Acupuncture is a branch of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and has been around for about 5,000 years. It is the practice of inserting very thin needles to stimulate pathways or meridians in the body to treat many illnesses and diseases, especially to relieve pain from chronic disorders.
Benefits of Acupuncture
Feel Full; Eat Less: Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners or TCM physicians claim that acupuncture can help individuals to lose body fat by making them feel full and eat less. This curbs excess caloric consumption in the patient treated with acupuncture and is a great help in the patient’s weight loss program.
Burn More Calories: Acupuncture treatment can also be used to raise patient metabolic rate and help them to burn more calories to speed up weight loss. Some Chinese medicine practitioners say that acupuncture stimulates the production of endorphins, hormones that help to lower body fat, insulin and lipid levels in the bloodstream. This results in less insulin being converted into body fat.
Acupuncture Alone Not Enough: Acupuncture is not a miracle cure for obesity. TCM physicians often stress that to achieve good weight loss results from one’s program and maintain your weight, acupuncture treatment alone is not enough. To lose weight effectively and keep the fat off permanently, acupuncture treatment must be combined with healthy eating habits and regular exercise.
What to Expect in Pretreatment: Before patients begin treatment, acupuncture professionals perform and examination and ask them questions to determine holistically the causes of their weight gain. According to Natural News, acupuncture therapists use this information to take a multi-targeted approach, targeting areas of the body that reduce cravings, stimulate the pituitary gland, decrease appetite, and potentially decrease insulin and lipid levels. To learn more, click Can Acupuncture Help Weight Loss?
Is There any Clinical Trial Support for Acupuncture? Belinda Weber showed the results of a clinical trial in Medical News Today that indicated patients receiving 5-point and 1-point ear acupuncture had a 6.1% and 5.7% weight reduction, respectively, over a period of 8 weeks with no other weight interventions, while the control group had no weight reduction. To read the full story click Ear Acupuncture Boosts Weight Loss.
If you have patients that want to lose weight naturally and without drugs, your facility might consider partnering with an acupuncture specialist to direct patients to add TCM acupuncture to their weight loss programs. Let UPS Healthcare help you decide whether acupuncture might be a service your practice would benefit from supporting.