Diabetes, heart conditions, and strokes pose high risk to over half the population of the United States. Why? Because fifty percent of the U.S. population is overweight. These conditions contribute to 300,000 deaths every year - deaths that could have been avoided through comprehensive weight-loss regimens.
Weight loss is no simple matter to discuss - it has far-reaching political and psychological implications that we must be sensitive to. Additionally, many plans for launching a personal weight-loss program aren't effective in the long term, as some people see the weight gain back shortly after their regimen has concluded. (Then there exist rapid-loss programs and drugs that are obviously too dangerous to take seriously as viable weight-loss methods.) Experts can agree upon one thing, however, and that is this: A personal revolution in lifestyle, including consistent dietary, behavioral, and exercise activities are requisite to lasting, healthy weight loss. In this capacity, alternative medicine can offer aid, as well as more direct care.
Chiropractic Offerings
Patients report good results from plans developed, primarily, through personalized instruction from their chiropractors. On one hand, your doctor can simply encourage you and help you stay on track; on the other, he or she can develop a personalized exercise and effective diet plan. Your lifestyle goals are only reachable upon a comprehensive and honest analysis of your personal mechanics.
You'll find that sustained treatment with chiropractic consistently provides a life of emotional stability, general feelings of health, and a great deal of stress relief. More expectedly, your body's structural alignment and stability will be restored, which itself has far-reaching benefits. Vertebral manipulation can, in fact, increase the success of weight-loss programs. When your spine is aligned, your body can more easily absorb the essential nutrients it needs. Patients enjoy a feeling of agility and lightness in the wake of comprehensive adjustments, because their spines are relieved of a great deal of pressure, and get a large degree of increased flexibility.
What About Aromatherapy?
Weight loss is not commonly touted as a benefit of aromatherapy. But it can prove itself a valuable companion in motivation and support in conjunction with your diet and exercise. "Smell therapy," which uses essential oils, will commonly invoke in the patient a variety of memories, feelings, and states of being. For instance, grapefruit oil is known to energize certain individuals, keeping the motivated to get off the couch and exercise. Also, some report that it makes them less hungry. Essential oils are fairly easy to find these days from bath product retailers, health food stores, and sometimes chemists.
Reflexology-based Alternatives
Weight loss has long been aided by effective reflexology application. The practice is a long-running treatment that is based upon a philosophy that links up a map of the foot with a map of the entire body. Therefore, by extension, a foot-masseuse can treat your entire body through pressure points. In particular, a reflexologist can stimulate your endocrine gland, which balances the activity of your hormones. In turn, your appetite can become somewhat more stabilized.
The Role of Acupuncture
Acupuncture has a lot in common with today's multifaceted alternative therapies. The first stage of acupuncture care, from the physician's standpoint, is to determine the general energy flow in your body - what parts need more or less - as well as how that energy regulates your metabolism of foods. Your body, to fully digest and enjoy the benefits of energy and health your food provides, can enjoy the benefit of needles applied to areas in your body that impede digestion. Acupuncture can also serve to regulate the activity of your hormones.
Chinese herbal medicine, as well as acupuncture can work with the lifestyle alterations of diet and regular exercise. The motivation and support that acupuncture is capable of giving may prove itself essential to your process, though.
Ayurvedic, Reiki, and other homeopathic methods also exist to build upon your healthy, measured regimen of weight loss, in addition to the ways we've already described. These alternative methods are all intended to guide you on a safe, holistic path to well-being, without compromising your happiness to simply meet a weight loss goal, but rather to have you meet that goal and be well throughout the process.