Acupressure therapy is a form of traditional Chinese medicine, and is a sort of variation of acupuncture. While acupuncture uses fine needles to achieve results, acupressure uses physical pressure, which can be applied by the fingers or other parts of the body, or even by special devices such as acupressure balls and acupressure mats. Like all traditional Chinese medicine, acupressure is based on the theory of meridians or channels that run through the body, and the forces of yin, yang, and “chi” (sometimes understood as spiritual energy). While there is no scientific evidence for the existence of any of these forces, acupressure practitioners believe that most health problems arise from an imbalance of these forces or an obstruction to their flow.
Based on this idea, acupressure is used to treat a wide variety of ailments today, and obesity is one of them. In order to achieve weight loss, acupressure aims to control the appetite and the digestive system, expel unwanted heat and moisture from the body, nourish the blood and the chi and improve their flow. For appetite control, you need to massage the appetite control point which is located near your ear. The point is located near the bottom of your ear, where your jaw begins. A few minute spent massaging this point daily is supposed to reduce one’s appetite. The acupressure point for your spleen is located on the inner side of your leg, approximately two inches above your ankle bone, and the stomach point is located approximately two inches below your knee cap, slightly towards the outer side of your leg. These two points should also be massaged daily for a few minutes. About six inches below this stomach point is another stomach point, and this second point should also be massaged daily. You are also advised to massage the large intestine acupressure point, located at the inner end of your elbow crease.
As mentioned earlier, there is no scientific evidence for any of this, and it is all based on traditional ideas that existed before the scientific method was developed. To the extent that these ideas have been tested scientifically, they have mostly proved to be useless, or at best have shown inconclusive results. Obesity is the result of a number of factors such as an unhealthy diet and a sedentary lifestyle, and can also be influenced by hereditary factors or caused by some health condition. These are the areas that must be addressed if you want to lose weight – simply massaging certain points of your body is unlikely to have any significant effect on your weight.