Archives: July 2025
Sticking With It: Acupuncture for Post-Weight Loss Surgery Support
You’ve made a big decision – bariatric surgery.
You’re showing up for your follow-up appointments. You’re sticking to your new way of eating. You’ve got your people cheering you on. Check, check, and check.
You need all the support you can get after weight loss surgery, and if you’re looking for an extra boost, complementary therapies like acupuncture may be worth a closer look.
What Exactly Is Acupuncture?
Acupuncture is an ancient therapy that involves placing fine needles into specific points on the body (referred to as acupoints). It has been used for over 3,000 years to help treat a wide range of conditions, from headaches to digestive disorders. And today, researchers are finally catching up to what patients have long observed: acupuncture makes you feel good because it can modulate systems in your body tied to metabolism, hormones, inflammation, and more.
And before you ask – no, the needles don’t hurt. Most people will feel a slight pinch, if anything.
Why Consider Acupuncture?
Surgery may have altered the size of your stomach, but weight loss and recovery still involve a symphony of other systems – your hormones, immune system, metabolism, stress levels, and gut bacteria all play a part. When one of those players is out of tune, it can throw things off. Acupuncture works across several systems, which is part of what makes it such an interesting complementary therapy for obesity and post-surgery.
One research study 1 suggests that acupuncture can help:
- Regulate appetite and hunger hormones
- Reduce stress-related hormone activity
- Support gut health and microbial diversity
- Improve glucose and lipid metabolism
- Calm chronic low-grade inflammation
In other words, it could help reinforce the very changes your body is trying to make post-surgery. Let’s take a closer look at the study.1
1. Appetite & Hormones
It’s not all in your head, but it might be in your hypothalamus. Your hypothalamus is a part of your brain that helps regulate hunger, hormones, and metabolism, and it plays a central role in your post-op success. Studies in animals show that acupuncture can dial down hunger signals by increasing the expression of appetite-suppressing molecules, while decreasing those that make you feel ravenous. That can be incredibly helpful when your body is adjusting to major changes after surgery.
2. Insulin, Glucose & Fat Metabolism
In several animal studies, acupuncture has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, reduce blood sugar levels, and help regulate fat storage and breakdown. That’s essentially a metabolic tune-up. Some evidence even suggests it can promote browning of white fat tissue, essentially turning energy-storing fat into energy-burning fat. In small human trials, electroacupuncture (the use of electrical stimulation through the needles) has also been linked to improvements in glucose levels and insulin resistance.
3. Stress & the HPA Axis
Calorie restriction, lifestyle change, and emotional processing after surgery can all activate your stress response. Your hormones probably need a chill pill. Acupuncture appears to help calm the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, your body’s main stress circuit. It’s been shown to decrease levels of cortisol (your stress hormone), inhibit overactive fight-or-flight responses, and improve your body’s ability to bounce back.
In other words, it could make the whole process feel more manageable.
4. Inflammation
Obesity is often tied to chronic low-grade inflammation, a kind of silent background noise that can mess with everything from metabolism to mood. That’s the kind of heat you want to turn down. In rodent models, acupuncture shifts immune activity away from inflammation, encouraging a more balanced immune response. It reduces inflammatory markers, such as TNF-α (which contributes to inflammation and insulin resistance) and IL-6 (spiked by stress and chronic disease), while supporting anti-inflammatory players, including IL-10, an anti-inflammatory cytokine that helps calm the immune system and repair tissue.
And in human studies? One found decreased oxidative stress markers in patients who received acupuncture alongside a low-calorie diet.
5. Gut Health & the Microbiome
You’ve probably heard by now that your gut microbiome (the trillions of bacteria in your digestive tract) has a major say in your metabolism and even your mood. Acupuncture appears to support a healthier gut environment by enhancing bacterial diversity and activating pathways that rebalance the microbial species associated with obesity.
Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes are two prominent bacterial families that dominate the gut. When they’re in balance, they help break down food, regulate inflammation, and support your metabolism. Animal studies show that electroacupuncture can lower the Firmicutes-to-Bacteroidetes ratio (F/B ratio), and that’s actually a good thing when it comes to obesity, where the F/B ratio is tipped too far and is associated with increased fat absorption and weight gain.
Some human studies have found similar trends in showing changes in microbial diversity and species richness following acupuncture.
Acupuncture + Lifestyle = Better Together
Let’s be clear: acupuncture isn’t a substitute for your surgery, follow-ups, or nutritional agenda. However, when combined with an already solid lifestyle plan, acupuncture may provide your results with an extra boost in the right direction and improve hormone balance more effectively than diet alone.
Research shows that acupuncture and lifestyle changes work synergistically, meaning the combo is more potent. In several studies, individuals who combined acupuncture with dietary changes and exercise experienced greater reductions in body weight, waist circumference, and hunger-related hormones compared to those using diet and exercise alone.
In a massive chart review of over 11,000 patients, those who received acupuncture alongside a very low-calorie diet showed meaningful weight reductions, which have spurred further research.1
If you’re considering acupuncture (or any complementary therapy, for that matter), let your bariatric care team know. You’re not asking permission, but you’re setting goals together and creating a fully informed, collaborative plan. And if it helps you feel a little more balanced, a little less stressed, and a bit more in sync with your body, then it just might be the boost you’ve been looking for.
1. Landgraaf, R. G., Bloem, M. N., Fumagalli, M., Benninga, M. A., de Lorijn, F., & Nieuwdorp, M. (2023). Acupuncture as multi-targeted therapy for the multifactorial disease obesity: a complex neuro-endocrine-immune interplay. Frontiers in endocrinology, 14, 1236370. https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2023.1236370.
