Print
The  DIMANAT® method
Auricular acupuncture and obesity

Obesity is a problem that affects about 40% of the Italian population, but despite the importance of the problem, the available data concerning the various forms of treatment offer results rather daunting, particularly if you are analyzed long-term protocols.

The classic treatment of obesity, based on dietary calorie restriction-often associated with the use of anorectic drugs, while showing some effectiveness in determining a short-term weight loss is certainly not free of side effects.

In "Dieting" frequently associated with adverse factors: intense hunger, craving (uncontrollable desire) for some food (often sweet foods), anxiety, irritability, low mood (psychological effects of diet restriction), all phenomena which make it difficult and in certain cases irnpossibile the continuation of dietary path. The patient can not lose weight on the contrary it tends to increase, the result is a psychological refusal to continue in therapy, so the patient leaves the dietary consultant (the Eclipse phenomenon). During that control weight inevitably increases, often exceeding the initial one. Is The Weight Cycling Syndrome, commonly called Yo-Yo Syndrome. These weight fluctuations seem to create a higher risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease than obese individuals with stable body weight.

To find a solution to these problems we turned to Non Conventional therapies, in that context the Acupuncture Headset has reached a clearly defined role, which recent ciinici and laboratory studies have studied down to the finest neurophysiological mechanisms.

The DIMANAT® method Lose weight Naturally, developed by our study group, it represents an interesting new integrated approach to the problem of overweight.

The possibility of affecting dietary behavior by stimulating precisely defined zones of the ear, is the peculiar element in the use of this therapy for the treatment of obesity. The man eating behavior is the result of the close interaction of environmental, cognitive, emotional and biological, which form a dense network very difficult to analyze. Biological ones, represented by sensations of hunger and satiety, play a very important role in food intake in a short time and it is on these aspects that auricular stimulation seems to primarily.

Recent studies have shown that auricular stimulation is able to significantly change the appetite intended as food cravings and how orientation of thought to achieve the same: this is achieved through the onset of early satiety during and between meals. Other effects obtained with auricular stimulation are:

a) modification to the choice of food: the patient is directed towards protein rather than carbohydrate and fat;

b) the reduction of episodes of craving (d1 a food, very often sweet) and "binge eating" (binge compulsive);

c) the improvement of mood, decrease anxiety and irritability.

It improves therefore subject obese adherence to dietary restriction and this promotes weight loss. Also very often in the obese, because of the alternation of periodic chaotic food restrictions with moments of total dietary disinhibition, develops over time a disorganized process of psychobiological mechanisms of feeding behavior control, with a complete or partial de-synchronization between external stimuli and feeling of satiety, physiological processes and neurotransmitter functions. Of these patients auricular stimulation seems to exert an action of resetting of the internal control mechanisms, thus able to maintain a more correct feeding behavior, from which a minor recovery of the lost weight.

These results indicate auricular stimulation as an effective tool that can be part of integrated models used in patient treatment overweight, speaking both at the stage of dietary restriction, both in the no less important than the maintenance of achieved weight.