Ear Acupuncture Can Help Shed Some Pounds
Auricular acupuncture can help shed the pounds, indicates a small study published online in Acupuncture in Medicine .
https://nutritionalsforlife.blogspot.com/2013/12/acupuncture.html
Auricular acupuncture can help shed the pounds, indicates a small study
published online in Acupuncture in Medicine.
Since then the approach has been used
to treat drug addiction and help people give up smoking and lose weight.
All participants were weighed and
measured at the start and end of treatment, and four weeks in, to include BMI,
waist circumference, body fat mass, percentage body fat, and blood pressure to
see what impact acupuncture might have.
Twenty four people dropped out before
the eight weeks were up, 15 of whom were in the sham treatment group,
suggesting that perhaps they found it harder to regulate their desire to eat
and cope with the restrictive diet, say the authors.
Using continuous stimulation of five
acupuncture points may be better at reducing abdominal fat (the midriff bulge)
than single point stimulation, the findings suggest.
Auricular acupuncture therapy is based
on the understanding that the outer ear represents all parts of the body. It
was first used in France in 1956 by Dr Paul Nogier who noticed that a patient's
back-ache was cured after s/he sustained a burn on the ear.
Since then the approach has been used
to treat drug addiction and help people give up smoking and lose weight.
The Korean researchers compared acupuncture
of five points on the outer ear -- shen-men (divine gate); spleen, stomach,
hunger, and endocrine -- and one point (hunger) -- with sham treatment on 91
overweight adults (BMI of 23 or more).
Participants were asked to follow a
restrictive (although not weight loss) diet and not to take any extra exercise
during the eight week period of their treatment.
Thirty one people were randomly
assigned to the five point treatment, which involved the insertion of
acupuncture needles 2mm deep into the outer ear. These were kept in place with
surgical tape for a week, after which the same treatment was applied to the
other ear, with the process repeated over eight weeks.
Another 30 people were assigned to the
same treatment process, but at just the one hunger point. And a further 30 were
given sham treatment -- with the same process and timescales, but with the
removal of the needles immediately after insertion.
All participants were weighed and
measured at the start and end of treatment, and four weeks in, to include BMI,
waist circumference, body fat mass, percentage body fat, and blood pressure to
see what impact acupuncture might have.
But among those who kept going for the
entire period, significant differences were apparent after four weeks, with the
active treatment groups showing a 6.1% (5-point treatment) and 5.7% (1-point
treatment) reduction, respectively, in BMI compared with the sham treatment
group among whom there was no reduction in BMI.
Weight also differed significantly
after four weeks in both active treatment groups compared with the sham
treatment group.
Waist circumference fell, with the
largest drop seen in the group on the 5-point treatment compared with the sham
groups, although this difference disappeared after taking account of age.
Measures of body fat also fell after
eight weeks, but only in those receiving the 5-point treatment. There were no
significant differences in blood pressure among the groups.
The authors conclude that both five and
one point approaches can help treat overweight, but that the five point
approach may be more appropriate for tackling abdominal fat.
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