Thursday 13 November 2008

China’s fattest man loses half his weight through acupuncture

A 34-year-old man from Beijing has gone from 38 stone to 19 in just one year apparently because of a strict acupuncture regime.

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Guanyu said...

China’s fattest man loses half his weight through acupuncture

A 34-year-old man from Beijing has gone from 38 stone to 19 in just one year apparently because of a strict acupuncture regime.

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
13 November 2008

Chang Yang, a 5’6” former mechanic, won the title of the Fattest Man in China in 2007 and was fired from his job at a steel company because of his enormous size.

In an interview with the Chinese state media, Mr. Chang said he had to turn sideways to go through doors, took up three seats on the bus and was teased by taxi drivers. “They said I was tilting the balance of the car,” he said.

His weight ballooned after his mother died in 1998 and he split up with his girlfriend. “I could easily wolf down a pound of rice and three pounds of meat at a time,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed the change until one day I suddenly found I couldn’t put my leg in my trousers.” At its peak, his waistline was over 80 inches.

Obesity is a growing problem in China, where sudden wealth has encouraged millions of people to turn to calorie-rich Western diets. In addition, the vast number of people migrating from the countryside to China’s cities has created millions more deskbound and exercise-shy office workers.

According to a recent study in the journal Health Affairs, more than a quarter of Chinese adults are now considered overweight or obese and the incidence is expected to double over the next two decades. Other experts put the number of obese at 40 million.

After Mr. Chang lost his job, he was forced to subsist on a tiny social security allowance and won a competition to be treated at a Traditional Chinese Medicine hospital.

Yu Shuzhong, his doctor, said he had been treated with acupuncture and “fire herbs”.

“We place a wet towel sprinkled with fat-reducing herbs on the belly. Then the herb is burnt, which produces heat and spreads into Yang’s skin through the towel, helping reduce fat little by little,” he said.

Mr. Chang was also forced to get out of bed early and his meals were cut to normal size.

Manuel Uribe from Mexico, officially listed the world’s fattest man in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records, married last month after losing 36 stone from his original weight of 92 stone.