Obesity is not only an American problem. According to World Health Organization (WHO), it's a global problem. They call it globesity. Parodoxically, their understanding of this problem began with their original mission to eliminate hunger and malnutrition. We live in a world where many have nothing to eat, and many eat too much. From 1995 to 2000, number of obese adults worldwide mushroomed from 200 million to 300 million. That's a 50% increase in just 5 years!

What is Obesity, and What is Overweight? Overweight means an excess of body weight. This excess weight may be muscle, bone, fat, and/or body water. Obesity refers specifically to an abnormally high proportion of body fat. You can be overweight without being obese - for example, a bodybuilder or other highly-muscled athlete. But many people who are overweight are also obese.The main way to determine whether you are overweight or obese is with body mass index (BMI). It doesn't directly measure body fat, and it's not gender specific, but it does give you a pretty reliable estimation.

To find your BMI, divide your weight (in kilograms) by your height in meters squared. Yep, for math-challenged, that's complex, so I'll give you a website that will figure it out for you, National Institute's of Health BMI calculator (http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/). This will very quickly tell you if you are normal, overweight, or obese, and it does all calculating and metric conversions for you!

Overweight is defined as a BMI above 25 (including those above 30 BMI, too), and obese is a BMI above 30. So, all obese people are overweight, but not all overweight people are obese.

The Obesity Epidemic Obesity isn't just about not feeling good or having trouble getting dates…

It leads to more than 300,000 premature deaths each year in United States. 90,000 are preventable cancer deaths. (CDC)

Severely obese men die 13 years sooner than men of normal weight (JAMA). As a killer in America, obesity is second only to tobacco. (CDC)

The Weight Loss Industry

Spending: Americans spend between $40-50 billion per year to lose weight. Results: I haven't seen any recent news that Americans are getting any thinner - have you?

Conclusion: What people are doing isn't working. If we want different results, we have to try a different solution.

Acupuncture Weight Loss: Fantasy, or Fact?

Fantasy or Fact? As a well-trained and fairly conservative Chinese medicine practitioner, I had assumed that acupuncture for weight loss was a marketing fad and a patient fantasy. Evidence: But while researching my upcoming book Chinese Medicine: A Practical Guide to Optimal Healing, I found some surprisingly positive information that changed my mind. Chinese Medicine's Collective Clinical Data on Acupuncture Weight Loss Chinese Medicine has thousands of years of clinical experience. This collective data not as convincing as randomized controlled trials are, but it does contain truth - it's imperfect but still valid and important.

A U.S. government study in 80's concluded that 85% of western medicine is based on clinical experience, not on research. (Office of Technology Assessment of Congress of United States, The Impact of Randomized Controlled Trials on Health Policy and Medical Practice, Background Paper OTA-BP-H-22. Also see Michael Millenson's book, Demanding Medical Excellence)

There is good Chinese Medicine research in Taiwan, Australia, and Europe that gets ignored by American scientists and media. Much research in Chinese has not even been translated into English.

Seven Studies of Acupuncture for Weight Loss

How it works: By enhancing function of two neuroendocrine pathways that regulate many bodily processes, including metabolism.

What it does:

* Lowers body weight, body fat, insulin levels, and lipid levels in blood * Decreases excessive appetite and makes it easier to satisfy your hunger with less food. * Decreases menopausal weight gain In one study, acupuncture took off 10 pounds in 2 months - that translates to 60 lbs in a year! * Combined with diet control, and aerobic counseling it not only takes off pounds and body fat, but keeps them off, especially if you're diligent with their exercise. (See references at end of article for research)

Ephedra misuse and mislegislation

Ephedra is a Chinese herb for colds and coughs. It has been misused to increase metabolism, and this misuse has caused numerous deaths. As a result, FDA is considering a total ban on ephedra products. We can blame two major things:

As I wrote about Chinese medicine on Pulse website, I thought, "It would be more beneficial for acupuncture's image if I focused on something like psychology. And, people really need to understand complexity and power of our herbal medicine system."

So talking about treatment of pain wasn't really on my list.

Western vs. Eastern Pain Relief But, I couldn't help seeing that Western medicine didn't have great pain relief solutions. They always have side effects of some drugs, and addictive potential of opiates (their most powerful pain killers).

My wonderfully well-read wife subscribes to a journal called The Pain Practitioner (www.aapainmanage.org/literature/PainPrac.php). After reading that for a few months, I suddenly realized that they never mentioned acupuncture. That's crazy, I thought. After all, it competes with drugs in terms of effectiveness and doesn't cause side effects. Plus, it's superior in permanently removing neurogenic pain, and preventing temporary pain from going through "grooved into brain" process that leads to chronic pain syndromes.

When you think of acupuncture, first thing that should come to mind is "Superior for treating pain."

Higher Standards for Pain Relief with Acupuncture I've found that many acupuncturists do not enjoy treating pain. I think this may be because they haven't learned a style of acupuncture that treats pain effectively and quickly. In October 2002, I began a mentorship with Robert Chu, who had learned a quick and powerful pain-relieving acupuncture system from a student of famous Taiwanese acupuncturist, Master Tong.

Dr. Chu has taught me several acupuncture systems that are not currently taught in acupuncture schools. His goal is immediate pain relief, to some degree, and immediate relaxation or a sense of well being in other diseases.

This is a high standard - we can't always achieve total pain relief with one treatment. It may take ten treatments to make a permanent dent in some situations. But I like having big goals. I think I'm more likely to make progress that way.

Location and Cause of Pain In clinic, first we find out where your pain is. If you've been in an accident, or there are nerve-related issues, we do a physical examination to discover nature of problem. For example, your pain may be due to a problem in spine, messages from brain, one of your internal organs, or because you've bruised a muscle, tendon, or ligament.

Sometimes, we can't find an obvious cause, even with X-rays, MRI's, and lab tests. We have to assume then that cause is neurogenic- from brain, nervous system, or even psyche. Pain can be a manifestation of emotion. There's nothing wrong, or less valid about that kind of pain.