The Sunday Mail
Dr Tafadzwanashe Magodora
Global health is facing a dramatic change. For the first time in human history, more people live in urban than rural areas, and more people are overweight than underweight around the world. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease and stroke, obesity, cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung disease kill more people globally than infectious diseases.
These five diseases share the common risk factors of tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, and harmful use of alcohol, as well as high blood pressure and cholesterol.
NCDs are a growing public health emergency.
Worldwide, NCDs kill over 35 million people each year, representing nearly two-thirds of the world’s deaths. More than 80 percent of NCD-related deaths are in low and middle-income countries, and nearly a third of those deaths occur before age 60.
People who are overweight or obese are at risk of developing heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis, fatty liver disease, sleep apnea, kidney disease and some types of cancer which include breast, colon and rectum, endometrium (lining of uterus), gallbladder and kidney.
Body mass index (BMI) is a number calculated from a person’s weight and height. BMI provides a reliable indicator of body fatness for most people and is used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems. It is defined as the individual’s body mass (in kg) divided by the square of their height (in metres).
A BMI of 18,5 to 25 may indicate optimal weight, a BMI lower than 18,5 suggests the person is underweight, a number above 25 may indicate the person is overweight, a number above 30 suggests the person is obese.
Some forms of alternative medicine, like Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), offer packages which might help people to lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
These include diet modification, physical activity, herbal medicines, catgut embedding therapy, and acupuncture and electro acupuncture.
By and large the most important aspects of all these is diet modification and physical activity (exercise) because the simple equation of losing weight is that you have to spend more energy than the energy you take.
Thus one has to eat less calories than your body needs so as to create a caloric deficit. These two pillars or foundations of weight loss are cited in both conventional (Western) medicine and Oriental medicine.
As simple as it sounds many people seem to fail in losing weight with some going to the extend of exonerating themselves citing factors like genetics, hormonal contraceptives, slothfulness etc.
A healthy diet is not simply a diet, it’s a lifestyle. The key to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight isn’t about short-term dietary changes.
It’s about a lifestyle that includes healthy eating, regular physical activity, and balancing the number of calories you consume with the number of calories your body uses.
Although many of our eating habits were established during childhood, it doesn’t mean it’s too late to change them. Making sudden, radical changes to eating habits such as eating nothing but cabbage soup, can lead to short term weight loss.
However, such radical changes are neither healthy nor a good idea, and won’t be successful in the long run. It’s important to make sure that your diet is well balanced in order to achieve good health, and avoid long term diseases and illnesses.
As our lives become busier, this can become more difficult. Once you have modified your diet and managed to lose weight there is need to maintain and keep that success.
A balanced diet also means that you keep yourself away from harmful fatty acids, junk food, alcohol, and cigarettes.
Adding lots of fruits and fresh vegetables helps in making your diet healthier and more delicious. A balanced diet refers to a diet that has a balanced proportion of all the ingredients that the human body requires. It contains proper amount of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, salts, vitamins and other such elements.
It ensures that no extra calories are stored in the body, leading to extra weight and fat.
Regular physical activity helps improve your overall health and fitness, and reduces your risk for many chronic diseases. It will help burn fat in your body.
Moderately intense physical activities that one can do includes walking, brisk walking, water aerobics, riding a bike or pushing a lawn mower.
Vigorously intense activities includes jogging or running, swimming laps, playing sport like soccer basketball, gym etc.
Traditional Chinese medicine has a weight loss herbal package which when used in conjunction with diet modification and physical activity, can hasten or accelerate weight loss.
The advantages of these herbs is that they are natural and with minimal or no side effects.
They act by accelerating the metabolic rate to increase the burning of fat as fuel and the degradation of fat in the body.
Some of them act by inhibiting absorption of lipids and carbohydrates and up regulating energy expenditure for example nelumbo nucifera leaves extract (NNE) which are found in Pro slimming herbal teas.
Spirulina platensis extract found in intestine cleansing teas and dieting green teas is being scientifically studied for its role in treatment of hyperlipidemia and happens to improve healthy bowel movement, alleviates dyspepsia and flatulence and generally improves the function of the digestive system.
A curious adjunct treatment to a weight loss programme which arouses interest because of its strangeness is catgut embedding therapy.
It basically involves inserting (infixing) 10 to 15 absorbable sutures, for example chromic catgut sutures, under the skin (subcutaneous) especially of the belly on special acupoints which then stay for 15 to 30 days while it naturally dissolve or gets absorbed by the body with no need to remove the suture materials.
It is done under aseptic techniques and is safe with no any complications having been reported to date.
It is thought that while the body absorbs or dissolves the sutures there is up regulation of energy expenditure leading to weight loss.
Lastly acupuncture or electro acupuncture can be added as complementary treatment for weight loss.
Acupuncture is the stimulation of specific acupoints along the skin of the body involving various methods such as the application of heat, pressure, or laser or penetration of sterile single use thin needles.
The needles are relatively painless and safe with minimal or no side-effects.
Electro acupuncture is a form of acupuncture where a small electric current is passed between pairs of acupuncture needles.
Acupuncture has been the subject of active scientific research both in regard to its basis and therapeutic effectiveness since the late 20th century.
A recent scientific study done by Meroing et al found out that acupuncture improves weight loss outcomes for the treatment of obesity.
Using biochemical analysis, researchers discovered potentially how acupuncture stimulates fat reduction.
They discovered a hormone, stimulated by the application of acupuncture that promotes weight loss by altering both appetite and metabolism.
The study involved feeding a high fat diet to laboratory rats for a twelve week period.
Next, the obese rats received electro acupuncture at a rate of three times per week for a total of four weeks. Taking a look at changes in brain chemistry, the researchers found that acupuncture controls the expression of leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and metabolism.
The research team notes that, “Electro acupuncture treatment led to a reduction of body weight, decrease in the plasma leptin levels, and an increase in leptin receptor expression in the hypothalamus.”
As a result of these findings, the researchers note, “Our results suggested that regulating the expression of leptin and the leptin receptor might be one of the molecular mechanisms underlying the reduction of body weight in diet-induced obese rats by electro acupuncture treatment.”
Medical researchers at the University of California have now confirmed that stimulating a specific acupuncture point, stomach 36, located below the knee, can promote weight loss.
The doctors found that needling this acupuncture point produces an up regulation of anorexigenic factor POMC production in the NTS/HN, which inhibits food intake and reduces body weight.
In simplified terms, this means that stimulation and treatment using this acupuncture point reduces food cravings in obese-prone subjects.
Send your feedback to Dr TB Magodora (MBChB-UZ, DpTCM-Sh, China) on [email protected]
