Seven Reasons Acupuncture Works for Weight Loss
Written By: Dr. Kristen Burris, DAcCHM Women’s Health Expert for Hormones, Menopause, Infertility and All Things Related to Women’s Health, East Asian Medicine and Functional Medicine
You haven’t tried acupuncture for weight loss yet. We all know for some people calories in, and calories out is the magic prescription for successful weight loss. But what if you are the one that just doesn’t fit that math? You have counted, tracked, starved, weighed, and even fasted. But your weight doesn’t go down. Or your weight just goes down by 2 pounds, up by 3, then down by 1, up by 2 and so and so forth. The whole world seems to be melting away but not you, you just stay the same, or even worse you keep gaining. Adding acupuncture to any weight loss strategy or program can be the key you were missing and here is why.
Acupuncture for weight loss works to balance hormones. Yes! Those pesky hormones. Ever wonder why you have spent your entire life trying to lose weight and it is a true heavy weight fight? Then, your husband decides for the first time ever to try and lose weight and poof! One month later he is down 12 pounds. The difference is not will power, or more muscle or motivation (although all of those things do help), it’s your hormones. Ask us for a hormone workup to get to the root cause of your stubborn inability to lose weight. We use both conventional lab work and functional testing to find out why you just don’t seem to lose weight.
Acupuncture for weight loss works by improving your digestion. If you are someone who often suffers from bloating after eating acupuncture can help improve your digestion, reduce bloating and enables your body to uptake vital nutrients and redistribute them throughout your body for better health and improved weight loss
Acupuncture for weight loss also works by reducing stress. Stress is a killer, quite literally. Stress can lead to emotional eating, binge eating or even mindless eating. Stress can pump out massive amounts of cortisol creating abdominal fat. Acupuncture releases feel-good hormones reducing anxiety, depression, and cortisol thereby aiding weight loss.
Acupuncture for weight loss can work by improving one’s sleep. Adequate sleep helps you regulate satiety hormones leptin and ghrelin which control appetite, hunger cues and a feeling of fullness. This in turn will reduce calorie intake, and snacking in between meals without feeling desperate or white knuckling it through a calorie restricted lifestyle. Improved sleep can also help people be more active throughout their day or increase their physical activity which helps build muscle and burn more calories.
Acupuncture for weight loss can be attributed in part to stimulating one’s metabolism and reducing one’s BMI and waist circumference. Studies have proven it. Acupuncture can improve thyroid function which has a direct impact on one’s metabolic efficiency. We can track this through lab work and prove its efficacy as we track weight loss progression.
Acupuncture has been proven in other studies to be an insulin sensitizer and showed to be more effective for weight loss compared to using the drug metformin alone. In a study published in Nutrition & Diabetes, (Firouzjaei et al 2016) , found adding acupuncture to metformin showed to improved weight, reduced BMI, improved fasting blood sugar, fasting insulin, leptin, glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1), serotonin, and other metabolic factors.
Sources:
Firouzjaei A, Li GC, Wang N, Liu WX, Zhu BM. Comparative evaluation of the therapeutic effect of metformin monotherapy with metformin and acupuncture combined therapy on weight loss and insulin sensitivity in diabetic patients. Nutr Diabetes. 2016 May 2;6(5):e209. doi: 10.1038/nutd.2016.16. PMID: 27136447; PMCID: PMC4895377.