American Acupuncture Weight Loss and Weight Management

Over 25 percent of Americans are overweight and trying to lose weight. Although Americans spend over 33 billion dollars annually on weight loss programs, the failure rate remains enormously high at 95 percent. Fortunately, medical acupuncture can help over 60 percent of these people.

You can't change your physical appearance without changing the emotional and mental habits that caused you to gain weight in the first place. These habits have resisted changes for a long time. Acupuncture will help you break these habits. Losing weight will make you healthier, more self-confident, more successful and even more socially accepted and your lifestyle will change. Acupuncture and the following techniques will enable you to successfully accomplish these goals.

Over 16% of our children are now obese. We all know the obesity problem in all adults in America, but it has now spread to our children. This epidemic has been related to changes in their lifestyle, including changes in their diets and reduced physical activity.

A child who is obese has 44 times more likely to have at least 3 cardiovascular risk factors.. 45% of children diagnosed with diabetes have type 2 diabetes (they need insulin),

One cannot ignore that one cause is caloric intake exceeds calories being burned.

There is no simple answer to this obesity epidemic. Many things contribute to this obesity problem. They are the same for most adults. Soft drinks, junk food, candy, fast foods, and the food industry provide more calories. Eating in fast food restaurants that provide super sizes of everything temp us all. Watching Tv many hours of the day, working mothers that can't provide a home meal, poor parenting, poverty, cell phones, bipods, and computers all decrease our physical activity. The schools contribute to this problem by providing vending machines with high caloric snacks and decrease in physical activity and lack of physical education classes all aid in the epidemic.

What has this done to your child's self esteem. They become depressed, have disturbancesw in their body images. This aids in poor academic performance and behavior problems increase.

Why be concerned? Because 75% of overweight teens become overweight adults. We know that a fat diet and inactifvity in adults causes over 300,000 deaths each year.

22% of children do not participate in vigorous or even moderate physical activity. 20% are not enrolled in any physical education class and only 14% attend physical education classes daily in our schools. We know that physically fit children perform better academically. We have qualified teachers that can ensure safe and appropriate activities that are enjoyable and that improve children's motor skills and that can keep our kids in health related fitness.

Only 2% of kids meet all the Food Guide Pyramid Recommendations and 16% don't meet any recommendations. 12% say they skip breakfast and only 11% eat a breakfast that contains three food groups. 84% eat too much fat, 91% eat too much saturated fat, and only! 5% eat fruit, 20% get enough vegetables, 30% get enough milk, and only 19% of girls get enough calcium for bone growth and bone density.

In 1970 kids drank more milk than soft drinks. Today, 55% of kids drinks soft drinks as opposed to 25% that drink milk.

We must all change the school environment. Education helps our kids plan and prepare for a successful future. Children spend time in school and the school must show parents the elements that lead to a healthy lifestyle. Get involved in helping the schools resist the pressures of the food industry's attempt to continue to make our children fat. Lifestyle changes are hard for all of us. We must show our children how to stay health by providing a venue to experience new tastes and new physical activities in the schools.

You are an electrical being. Without electricity your body would die. The heart and brain are driven by electricity. Acupuncture balances the electrical forces and allows the body and all its organs to function properly.

Bioelectrical balancing of the body is an important first step in healing the body. This balance can be checked by pulse diagnosis or meridian balancing. If your body is out of electrical balance this must be corrected. Meridians are like rivers of energy that all connect throughout the body. There are 14 such rivers, 12 on the hands and 2 of them midline on the front and back of the body.

In order to balance the electricity within the body, two or more needles are placed on the hands, feet, or abdomen. Silver or gold pellets or silver rings may be worn to enhance this balance. Silver is like adding water to a fire, because it slows the energy flow. Gold, on the other hand, is like adding wood to the fire. Thus, making it more intense. An analogy might be made to a room that is too hot. You simply close the vent and the heat goes to the other rooms in the house. So too, if a river of energy is overactive, by placing silver on a select finger, one can slow the energy of that river (meridian). This results in more energy flowing to other rivers of the body.

When you are under stress, your body signals messages to different organs which triggers the need to eat. Sometimes your mouth wants to chew. Or your pancreas may lower your blood sugar until all you can think about is the ice cream in the refrigerator. Other times, your stomach growls loudly reminding you to eat, eat, eat. Oftentimes, your liver is not metabolizing the fats properly. All the junk food you ate, with its hydrogenated fats, become stored in as fatty layers of cellulite.

You were focused on a sensible diet, but after one week, you step on the scale to discover that your mouth, pancreas, stomach, and liver have thwarted your efforts to lose weight and you have actually gained two pounds. The liver, mouth, brain, pancreas, and stomach all overreact when they encounter stress. Therefore, these organs require sedation. Fortunately, the ear has sites that can send messages through the brain to these organs and thus prevent them from overreacting. Tiny needles are placed on select locations of the ear and stimulated manually or electrically. Messages travel to the corresponding organ which calms and sedate the organs.

Three of these organs, the stomach, pancreas, and liver, lie very close to each other on the ear. Due to their close proximity, a Chinese berry seed or silver tack needle can be placed over this area of the ear to provide continuous sedation to all of these points. Both the Chinese berry seed and the silver tack needle transmit energy to sedate these organs. Its as if a satellite dish antenna was placed on the ear and electromagnetic energy from car motors, computers, TVs, and florescent lights. Years ago staples were placed in the exact same area, but the staples frequently became buried in the skin and were difficult to remove.

In order to rid your mind of a stressful feeling, you must acknowledge that feeling and deal with it. The following mind focus exercise will help you deal with any stressful feeling that may trigger you to overeat.

When you are driving home in the rain and can't see where you are going, you turn the windshield wipers on. Now you can see the road and find your way home When under stress, if you can turn on the wipers of your brain, you will diffuse the stress and even reverse the stressful thought racing in your head.

You can do this by doing 4 things: humming, counting, rolling your eyes around the room and taping on your hand. Sounds crazy? Read on.

Many people you know hum or whistle when they are under stress. The humming stimulates their right brain (the side that does not have to think). When you count, you stimulate the dominant side of the brain, the side that must solve problems (the left side). When you roll your eyes around, you stimulate the middle of the brain, where the optic eye nerves are located. When you tap your hand you reverse and diffuse the stressful thought by stimulating a powerful acupuncture point. The thought loses its intensity and importance. You have disposed of the thought and now can go on with other things.

The initial thought is, "I am very hungry!" After ten seconds of mind unscrambling, the thought becomes "I am on a good weight reduction program and I really am not that hungry." I now can make choices rather than respond out of stress.

STEP ONE	HUM: MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB, LITTLE LAMB . . .
STEP TWO	COUNT OUT LOUD: ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE
STEP THREE	CONSTANTLY TAP WITH THREE FINGERS OF YOUR RIGHT HAND OVER THE BACK OF THE LEFT HAND ON THE LARGE BONE LOCATED BETWEEN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH FINGERS.
STEP FOUR	ROLL YOUR EYES AROUND THE ROOM.

You must be able to hear yourself out loud as you do this exercise. Do this twice slowly.

NOTE: You may select any melody you choose. Mary had a Little Lamb is only an example.

Much has been written in the last few years about free radicals and the use of antioxidants to rid the body of these free radicals. Your body is made up of water which is hydrogen and oxygen. Under stress the water breaks up into hydrogen (positive charge) and oxygen (negative charge). These charged radicals blast around the body disturbing the enzyme and cell systems and cause havoc. Its like hydrogen and oxygen were married and now get divorced and go their separate ways disturbing everything in their paths.

Antioxidants are super vitamins that remove the charges from the free radicals (like getting hydrogen and oxygen to get back together). They allow the body to recover and build up the body's resistance to disease. This helps one overcome the effects of stress that is turning to distress. Both herbs and antioxidants are used freely in weight reduction programs in conjunction with acupuncture treatments which are usually given monthly.

Aroma therapy can enhance weight reduction also. People who lose their sense of smell are more at risk for generalized anxiety disorder. We eat more when we are tired. Our left brain is exhausted from a busy day of problem solving. The right brain controls emotions and is overreacting from not being active all day. If we can sedate the emotions by smelling pleasant aromas we will control our decision making.

All day long you work hard and the left brain is active solving the problems of the day. There is no time for the emotional right brain to express its creative acts. By the end of the day, when you come home you don't want to solve the problems of family living and only want to have some fun. The emotional right brain is ready for the task. It has been cooped up all day and is ready for action. You enter the house, take off your coat, and immediately devour 3 cookies and all food in site.

If during the day, you can satisfy the emotional right brain, then the rational left brain can reason with you. You will be focused on why you are eating, eat slowly, and observe the presentation and texture of the food. This can be accomplished by smelling certain pleasant aromatic creams during the day.

You are tested to see which aromas are pleasant to you. It may be fruity aromas such as apple or banana, peppermint, lavender, or vanilla. By placing some aromatic cream in the nose two or three times during the day you will be giving your body the prozac boost.

When you drive home in heavy traffic and squirt some vanilla or lavender scent in the car's air vent you will find the ride home more enjoyable. As you arrive home, you will be more relaxed and reason will take over emotion.

In the enchanting hours of 9-10 PM when you usually devour most of your empty calories, you will think twice if you have an aromatic candle burning or spray the TV room with your favorite relaxing aroma.

Herbs have always played a role in weight reduction. They curb the appetite, sedate the emotions, increase the body metabolism and block fat absorption from foods. Recently there has been much discussion about Phen Fen and other herbs. Some weight reduction centers have closed because they relied on Phen Fen as their exclusive form of treatment. Other herbs used in weight control are St.John's wort, Ma Huang, Chitin, and green tea.

St. John's wort is a strong natural tranquilizer that does not have any sleepy effects. It has been used and tested in Germany for almost 15 years. It is very popular and works like Prozac without problems. Ma Huang is an ephedra herb which energizes and acts like caffeine. If taken in large amounts in a person with high blood pressure it could exacerbate it. Its drug counter part would be the antihistamine sudafed. Chitin blocks the absorption of fat in the body and also mobilizes the fatty acids stored from fast foods (hydrogenated fats), the cellulite in the body that simply will not move. Green tea is a stimulant like caffeine but also stimulates endorphins in the body. The Chinese use it in place of our Coca-Cola.

One can expect around 1 1/2 pounds to be lost weekly, and its all fat. Old thoughts are fighting new thoughts. You have a love affair with yourself. Pleasure and self-love must be included in your weight reduction program. Remember you can love yourself even though you may consider yourself overweight. Utilizing all of the above techniques of American Acupuncture you can achieve your goal of a new healthier you! Utilizing all of the above techniques results in achieving this goal.