Lose weight without gaining it back, Chinese medicine can help! Obesity is divided into 3 categories, and TCM can treat it according to the symptoms

Common types of obesity

The causes of obesity are mainly related to age, genetics, lifestyle, and characteristics of adipose tissue. In addition to obesity caused by endocrine metabolic abnormalities or other diseases, the main culprit of obesity is excessive calorie intake causing fat accumulation. From the perspective of weight loss in traditional Chinese medicine, obese constitutions can be roughly divided into the following three categories:

The healthiest way to lose weight is actually to change your lifestyle habits and avoid eating three types of food: fried foods, sugary drinks, and exquisite desserts. If this is possible, your weight will at least not increase linearly, but it is still not easy to lose weight, so you can use medication to help regulate your body and increase metabolism.

1. People with dry and hot constitution are overweight

Patients experience dry mouth, easy hunger, large appetite with heavy taste, and a habit of overeating. The stomach and intestines are easily stimulated by salty, spicy and fried foods for a long time, which can easily lead to dysfunction and constipation. Over time, it will cause heat to accumulate in the stomach, and stomach heat can easily cause hunger, which in turn causes excessive appetite, and finally falls into a vicious cycle of frequent eating. This type of patients are mostly young and middle-aged people and postpartum women.

2. Obesity due to liver depression and qi stagnation

Patients often use eating big meals as a way to relieve stress, so their bodies tend to gain or lose weight with their mood swings. They often feel irritable and depressed, and even suffer from insomnia. Physiologically, they experience chest and flank distension, dry mouth, and bitter taste in the mouth. Female patients may also have symptoms of endocrine imbalance such as menstrual disorders.

3. Pseudo-obesity due to spleen deficiency and dampness

This type of patient is the so-called "pseudo-obese" and is not really obese, but is the type of patient who most needs physical conditioning. The muscles of this type of patients are soft and fat, they are prone to heavy-headedness and chest tightness, mental fatigue and seldom talk, lack of physical strength, and drowsiness. Occasionally, they may have symptoms such as abdominal distension, nausea, and loose stools. This type of condition most commonly occurs in office workers, who are most likely to develop this type of puffy physique due to their sedentary lifestyle and lack of activity.

Regain your charming style, diet control is the key

There are two ways to lose weight: reducing calorie intake or increasing calorie expenditure. Modern medical research also points out that to reduce weight and body fat, simply controlling diet is more effective and faster than simply exercising without controlling diet. Therefore, controlling calorie intake is basic, but you absolutely cannot lose weight by not eating. Maybe the numbers will go down at first, but then your endocrine system will adjust and find a new balance. Not only will it be ineffective over time, but you will eat more and gain more weight.

The healthiest way to lose weight is actually to change your lifestyle habits and avoid eating three types of food: fried foods, sugary drinks, and exquisite desserts. If this is possible, your weight will at least not increase linearly, but it is still not easy to lose weight, so you can use medication to help regulate your body and increase metabolism.

If a person has edema due to poor water metabolism and edema caused by edema, Chinese medicine for strengthening the spleen and promoting water excretion, such as coix seed, poria, Euryale ferox, etc., can be used to help excrete excess water from the body; if a person has yang deficiency and slow metabolism, warming yang medicines such as dried ginger and cinnamon can be used to speed up the body's metabolism; if a person has a dry and hot constitution and insufficient yin fluid causes difficult constipation, yin nourishing medicines such as Ophiopogon japonicus and Rehmannia glutinosa can be used to make bowel movements smooth and normal.

The benefits of using Chinese medicine to reduce appetite include not having to endure hunger while losing weight, and not being able to resist eating and drinking a lot after losing weight. Instead, your appetite will be better, and your weight will increase instead of decrease. Chinese medicine's qi-replenishing effect is like vitamins, which can provide patients with sufficient physical strength, so that you will not be exhausted during the weight loss process, allowing you to lose weight without burden. If you have any related questions, please feel free to seek professional assistance from the Department of Traditional Medicine.

This article was provided by Taipei Medical University Hospital Health Report, March 2022

Author: Su Boxuan, attending physician of the Department of Traditional Medicine, Peking University Hospital