Chinese Medicine To Support Sensible Weight Loss

By Sally Perkins

According to the CDC, around three-quarters of all American adults are overweight. With around two-thirds of these trying to change their eating habits and lose a few pounds, it’s no surprise that weight loss plans and programs are big business, with a huge range of suggestions and options touted as providing miraculous results – some with more success than others. Chinese medicine offers the opportunity for mindful, realistic and sustained weight loss, so if you’re looking for a sensible solution for an ongoing, healthy lifestyle, here are some changes you could consider making.

Food and Functionality

Traditional Chinese Medicine is based on many principles relating to food consumption, metabolism and digestion which can aid weight loss and improve your relationship with eating. Excessive weight gain is thought to relate to the accumulation of ‘dampness’ – a condition that occurs when food intake, absorption, digestion and transportation are not balanced. Take the festive season as an example – if you eat too much, or consume food higher in fat, your spleen and stomach will struggle to transform your food, and any excess will be left sitting stationary, leading to an accumulation of dampness.

Elimination of dampness is the main tenet of traditional Chinese weight loss programs, and there are a number of ways to achieve this. According to the guidelines, cultivating a diet of bitter, sour and pungent foods can aid with achieving a healthy body shape, and help you avoid fluctuating weight that can have an impact on your mood, wellbeing and budget – having to invest in different clothes of different sizes gets expensive, and has a negative impact on the environment too. Whether you’re ensuring your favorite bikini will fit exactly come the summer, aiming to eliminate health conditions exacerbated by weight, or simply want to adopt a more mindful lifestyle, changing the way you eat can make a real difference.

Antioxidant Assistance

Many Chinese people drink tea every day, and it is thought to have a number of health benefits. Polyphenols are an antioxidant found in tea and may help to maintain a healthy metabolism whilst you lose weight, repairing cells and easing digestive issues. Green tea, Jiaogulan tea and Oolong all have a soothing flavor and a good level of antioxidants, and just one cup a day is enough to make a difference – something that can be easily incorporated into most daily routines. There are also various herbs known to support weight loss by suppressing appetite, burning fat, and boosting metabolism. He Ye (lotus leaf), Fu Ling and Huang Qi are some of the most well-known, but there are others that may also be suitable, depending on your lifestyle, goals and commitment to weight loss. Consulting a Chinese medicine practitioner can help you to tailor an individual treatment plan based on your personal needs.

Photo by Kristaps Ungurs on Unsplash

Changing the way you eat and drink and supplementing with appropriate herbs is not just about losing weight; it’s about improving your overall wellbeing and health as well. Making one or two small changes at a time can support you to develop positive food habits that’ll balance your body and leave you feeling fit and functional – as well as helping you to stay that way.

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by Emma

Acupuncture for Weight Loss

By Dr Bruce Stafford

For over a millennium, health practitioners living within the Far East have been using Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to help their patients with their mind, body and spirit. Studies have shown that within recent years, more people within western countries are now searching for ‘alternative’ methods to improve their general health – particularly towards acupuncture for weight loss. Acupuncture helps identify with the root causes of the weight loss to help your body deal with it
accordingly:

Here’s how acupuncture can help you finally lose the weight:

Repairing Your Digestion

If your digestive system is not functioning properly, this will also inhibit your body’s ability to lose weight. You will know if it’s not working properly if you experience symptoms of bloating, reflux, nausea, constipation, lose bowels or IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome)

This is because your body will be producing an excessive amount of ‘Damp’ or ‘Phlegm’ in Chinese Medicine terms (The closest term we can use to explain this would be ‘inflammation’) and you’ll know if you have a lot of Damp or Phlegm if you experience sinus problems or chronic allergies, if you feel exhausted or lethargic in the mornings, have loose bowels, feel sluggish and tired and experience bloating.

Acupuncture for weight loss helps return your digestion back to normal by stimulating your body’s natural blood flow to your stomach and spleen to strengthen their function so they start to work properly again which is important for weight loss as not only will you be able to lose weight more easily, but you’ll also feel lighter and have more energy.

Balancing Your Natural Hormones

The body naturally produces fat-producing hormones such as cortisol, estrogen and insulin as well as fat-burning hormones such as adrenaline, human growth hormone, testosterone, insulin growth factor and glucagon. For many people, their fat-producing hormones are over-stimulated and much too active, while their fat-burning hormones are under-stimulated and not active enough.

Acupuncture for weight loss corrects your organ function, particularly your Liver, Kidney, Stomach and Spleen which are all crucial in the synthesis and secretion of the correct number of hormones for weight-loss.

Furthermore, Acupuncture may also assist with better sleep, reduce your pain and stress levels, which will in turn reduce the amount of cortisol (a key fat-making hormone) your body is producing to help you lose weight. When all these organs start to function properly again, your natural fat-controlling hormones will start to stabilize making it easier for you to lose weight.

Making Weight Loss Easier

Acupuncture for weight loss is also used in appetite suppression, to prevent you from feeling hungry all the time and to stave off cravings (especially for sweet or savoury foods) and keep you ‘cool’ and relaxed while you lose weight.

Whilst it’s extremely important to get your digestion and hormonal balance working in balance, you will also need to watch what you eat. It is this combination that makes acupuncture for weight loss so effective.

Correcting the Root Cause of Weight Gain

Not only does acupuncture for weight loss help you to lose weight, it is also helps facilitate in the identification of the root cause of the source of the problem and why you gained weight in the first place.

On top of this, acupuncture is also helping to improve your overall health. So if you want to lose weight and feel great doing it, acupuncture may be the answer you’ve been looking for.

Here is a handy infographic with 5 Chinese Medicine Weight Loss Secrets.

Author Bio
Dr Bruce Stafford (Chinese Medicine) is the owner and founder of Emperor’s Acupuncture & Integrative Medicine in Melbourne, Australia

He has trained with some of the world’s best-know Masters in Australia, Taiwan and the USA. Bruce has treated thousands of patients using acupuncture for weight loss at Emperor’s Acupuncture and Chinese herbs to help improve organ function to rebalance the body’s natural fat-controlling hormones.

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by Emma

Incorporating Chinese Medicine Into Your Weight Loss Program

By Sally Perkins

Half of Americans say they are trying to lose weight. That’s over 163 million people in the United States alone who are unhappy with their weight, and that doesn’t take into account the rest of the people around the world who are also trying to be healthier. Traditional Chinese Medicine has many principles that contribute to weight loss and a healthier lifestyle, as it relates to food consumption, digestion, metabolism, and other bodily functions that relate to weight. There are many of these principles you can incorporate into your daily routine to aid your body in processing fuel and help with weight loss.

Definitely Your Cup Of Tea

Igor Miske

Many people equate tea, especially green tea and black teas like oolong, with Chinese culture. This is for good reason, as many Chinese people drink tea every day, and it is thought that drinking tea has many health benefits. Tea contains polyphenols, a specific type of antioxidant, which can help keep your metabolism from slowing as you lose weight. Polyphenols can also assist with digestive issues, and, as with other antioxidants, help repair cells. You can reap the benefits of polyphenols by drinking just one cup of tea per day. You can easily add this to your daily routine; just brew one cup every morning as part of your morning ritual. Just like other small habit changes you can make to improve your health, like drinking more water, standing instead of sitting at work, or going to bed half an hour earlier in order to get more sleep, this is a small modification that can yield great benefits. Sometimes the best way to make positive changes for overall health is to make one or two small changes at a time, allowing those changes to become habits before taking on more.

Eating For Energy

Qi is the energy that runs through our bodies, and maintaining a healthy, balanced qi is essential for proper health. Habits that drain your energy can be detrimental to your weight loss efforts. Unhealthy habits like eating late at night, eating raw, cold foods, and skipping breakfast can stress your digestive organs and cause your qi to become unbalanced. Something as small as adding breakfast to your daily routine can help to restore balance to your body and increase your energy, making it easier for your body to lose weight.

Joseph Gonzalez

Supplement Your Diet

In addition to eating the right foods for your organs and to aid in digestion and energy levels, there are many Chinese herbs that can help with weight loss. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, it is believed that excessive weight is caused by an accumulation of “dampness,” and therefore attempts to lose weight are made by relieving this dampness. Herbs that help to balance this condition and aid in weight loss include Bao He Wan, He Ye or lotus leaf, Fu Ling and Huang Qi. You can develop a supplement plan with a TCM specialist, and by adding your personalized combination to your diet, you can help restore your body’s balance.

Traditional Chinese Medicine can assist with weight loss, whether you subscribe to TCM principles completely and transform your lifestyle, or simply incorporate some of them into your existing routine. You can use TCM to aid you with a particular issue, or to achieve a generally healthier way of life. Traditional Chinese Medicine can be highly customized to create a specialized regimen for your body and your lifestyle and weight loss needs. The more research you can do on Chinese medicine and the different ways it can improve your body’s functionality, the more ideas you can integrate into your life.