Effective use of clinical hypnotherapy could be the answer to government cuts to public health funding which, say local councils in England, will hamper their efforts to tackle obesity.
Local Government Association (LGA) figures show that councils will have spent £505m by 2017 on fighting obesity, the BBC reports.
Councils use the money to measure children’s weight at primary school, help people lose weight and offer free or cheaper leisure facilities. Public health became the responsibility of local authorities in April 2013. Before that, it was run by the NHS.
The LGA receives money from the government to spend on public health, and this sum will fall from £3.38bn in 2016/17 to £3.13bn in 2020/21.
The association, which represents more than 370 councils said it was set to spend about half a billion pounds on obesity prevention in adults and children over four years. About £267m of that amount was for the period 2015 – 2017.
The LGA said the figures illustrated the amount of prevention work councils were carrying out and showed the scale of the obesity crisis.
Recent figures showed that in 2014/15 in England, one in 10 children aged four and five was obese and one in five children aged 10 to 11 was obese.
With the weight problem growing across the UK, hypnotherapy is ideally placed to be a method of helping people manage their weight. The National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) has more than 1,800 fully qualified therapists on its register who can offer this help.
Hypnotherapy has proved successful with more than just obvious areas such as stopping smoking or stopping unwanted habits, says the NCH. It has also been shown to successfully treat physical issues as well.
“Common conditions that have responded well to hypnotherapy and shown significant improvement include weight management,” says the NCH.
“As well as stopping compulsive eating, effective hypnotherapy can help reduce portion sizes so that weight lose is achieved in an effective and healthy manner for the long term.”
The NCH adds that weight management is essentially about making the person feel good about themselves and helping them focus on healthy changes to diet sand lifestyle that will remain for the rest of their lives.
Given that the Department of Health has said it was committed to tackling obesity and that the government has announced a sugar tax on soft drinks manufacturers earlier in the year, the drive to beat obesity seems sincere.
But the LGA said the overall cost of obesity was forecast to rise further and it has previously called on the government to reduce sugar content in fizzy drinks, make sugar labelling clearer and provide more tap water in schools and restaurants.
Councils also want to have powers to ban junk food advertising near schools.
And, again, this is where clinical hypnotherapy can play an important role. The NCH holds the largest register of qualified therapists across the UK and, if you’re worried about your weight or that of your children, simply click here to find a hypnotherapist near you.