If a cow ever got the chance...

Well, this should be interesting. It seems that I will be in a study about acupuncture's effects on weight loss. Neat, huh? I'll know for sure in a couple weeks.

Last week I devised this new self-improvement program (which I didn't write about in here because I thought it was kinda stupid). Every day I am forcing myself to have one "difficult" social interaction, or in some way reach out to the outside world. This could be having lunch with Cyril or calling around yet again to try and find a shrink (an effort that is totally stalled, but the details are really boring so I won't get into it). I even actually answered a "Just Friends" personal ad in the paper (someone who wanted depressed friends to talk to), but when leaving phone messages I sound like a big lame, so I doubt she calls back. Still, I thought that was worth double difficulty.

Anyway, this acupuncture place put an ad in the paper that they were accepting participants for their weight-loss study, in which they give you free acupuncture treatment once a week for twelve weeks and free herbs. Answering the ad was today's little project. (I have been curious about acupuncture since last year when I was the production editor on this book about "Oriental" medicine--I know a little bit about it from that book, but nothing firsthand). When I called on Friday they told me to just come in for the pre-screening, which was today. It seems like a nice place, very casual. The receptionist thought I was there to sign up for classes in how to give acupuncture. ("No, I'm here for the, um, study." "Oh, the OBESITY study! Okay! Carla, she's here for the OBESITY study!") Actually she was very nice, and gave me a whole bunch of application materials so that I could sign up for the acupuncture classes anyway. There followed ten or so minutes of being taken into various waiting rooms by various people and introduced to the people who were already there ("She needs to fill out the paperwork for the OBESITY study"). It was all sort of embarrassing but completely without malice. I was wearing this terrible fatcoat with like three buttons left on it, too, so I think I looked the part. The funny thing was that in the last room (a very large classroom), there were a couple of interns in white coats doing preliminary interviews for my peers in the OBESITY study, and every time someone came in to wait, all the interns and applicants (including me) would swivel our heads as one to see the new OBESE person, evaluate their fat level in relation to our own, and assess their chances of getting into the study.

Okay, maybe that was just me.

I'm pretty sure I'll get in, since I pass the requirements with flying colors (a weight that's been stable for the last year or so, not currently on a diet, not planning to skip town between July and October, willingness to come in every week for an acupuncture treatment and take some special herb formulation every day, and (probably the most important) a frighteningly high body-mass index. No, I'm not going to tell you what mine is--I'm not huge but I am indisputably chunkalicious, and I think we'll leave it there.) The intern who did my pre-screening interview seemed to think I would get in too. A lot of the aforementioned head-swiveling that I was doing was because none of the other applicants I saw (four or five altogether) were fat. They had at most twenty extra pounds to lose. One actually looked underweight. So if nothing else, I am happy about my chances.

I didn't tell you the best part (besides its being free). It's a randomized twelve-week double-blind study, all very scientific, so of course it has a control group. If you're in the control group, you don't get the specialized acupuncture treatment for weight loss, you get a placebo where they stick needles into various inert points of your body. At the end of the study, if you were the control, they tell you so and give you twelve weeks of the real treatment, also for free. Just because "it's not fair otherwise".

More about this later--I think it could be a really good thing. The treatments they're proposing supposedly work to speed up one's sluggish metabolism so you automatically lose weight. It makes sense. The only thing I can think of that would be more effective is regular exercise. Oh, the horror.

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