How Acupuncture Aids Weight Loss

The Hormonal Factor in Weight Loss and Maintenance

Common wisdom holds that the soundest strategy for losing weight is to eat less and exercise more -- but as with so many of the facts of life, the truth behind weight loss can be more complicated than that. The human body's hormonal balances (or imbalances) also play a major role in how readily we can burn calories and how hungry we feel. Believe it or not, acupuncture can help reset your body's hormonal mechanisms and help you fight the urge to eat, and we are happy to offer this form of weight control to our patients at Vitality Health & Wellness.

If you find yourself unable to control your food cravings, or you fail to shed pounds no matter how hard you exercise your body or your self-discipline, then your hypothalamus may be to blame. This is the part of the brain that mixes the delicate cocktail of hormones that regulate your sleep cycle, metabolic thermostat, reproductive system and countless other functions. It controls your weight by balancing two hormones in particular, ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin makes you hungry, while leptin makes you feel satisfied. When this seesaw swings too heavily in one direction or the other, eating and burning calories in a healthy manner can become all but impossible.

Acupuncture Can Reduce Cravings

Our acupuncturist can help restore balance to your hormone levels to help control your food cravings and lose weight more easily. To achieve this, we target four specific meridians on the ear -- the stomach point, the endocrine point, the Shen Men point, and the hunger point. Together these four points control the flow of chi, or life force, that regulate your food intake and metabolism. The tiny needles barely enter the skin, but over the course of several sessions you will notice a difference in your attitude toward eating. This treatment works particularly well in conjunction with our other weight loss techniques, so let us devise a customized program just for you!

Have you had acupuncture before? To treat what condition?