My Experiences with Cupping Therapy

Dry cupping with plastic suction cups, like the
ones used on me. Air is removed with a pump,
raising the skin & dilating blood vessels.
It's uncomfortable, but non-painful, feels like
the skin is being stretched, and looks
as though there's a ping-pong ball
beneath the skin!

After hearing about the success of cupping therapy from two of my lab-mates (both of whom I trust to be very empirical and objective people), I thought I would give it a try for myself. Cupping has been practiced for thousands of years, and has even been documented in one of the earliest medical texts, the Ebers Papyrus. Cupping is a common practice of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), but is also practiced by a variety of other cultures, including many Islamic groups in the Middle East (even the Prophet Muhammad has approved of the Hijamah). 

Cupping is often used in combination with another form of therapy or treatment, and has been used to treat a multitude of conditions:

• Skin problems: herpes zoster (shingles), acne, eczema, and inflammation
• Anemia, hypertension & migraine
• Fever, cold & flu
• Menstrual cramps
• Hangovers (cupping>cup of joe!)

Cupping is NOT advised for pregnant women or those with hemophilia (inability or trouble clotting blood). According to my licensed acupuncturist and therapist, Lily, there is no age restriction on who can undergo this form of therapy, although she advises children be over the age of 7 or so.

Meridians of the human body.

There are two main forms of cupping therapy: wet and dry. Dry cupping consists of placing a small cup ranging from 3 to 10cm in diameter on various parts of the skin that correspond to various meridians on the body. Traditionally, a flame would be placed at the base of the cup, essentially extinguishing any oxygen inside the cup and creating a suction effect when placed on the skin. The main point of cupping is to increase circulation and effectively "cure" oneself by redirecting the flow of "bad" blood (likely deoxygenated blood in areas of poor circulation). My therapist, Lily, uses plastic cups that have a nozzle at the top to remove air via a plastic pump. The cups are initially placed for 10 to 20 minutes, at which point the blood vessels beneath the stretched skin are dilated. Lily uses her knowledge as a certified and licensed acupuncturist to determine which pressure points are problematic based on three main criteria: change in skin colour or bruising (if any), the texture of the skin and surrounding area, and the temperature of the skin after removing the cups. Just as with acupuncture needles, how long the cups are left on the skin depend on a variety of factors, including those just mentioned and the patient's symptoms and general health, the reduction of bruising from past sessions, and the degree and speed of skin colour change. All of these clues and the meridian points correspond to specific organs and body systems, allowing the therapist to infer which ones may be weaker and in need of more focused cupping in subsequent sessions. 

While dry cupping is completely topical and non-invasive, wet cupping involves puncturing the skin beneath the cups after initial placement, then putting the cups back on again in order to release the "bad blood" or toxins found in problematic areas. While this may sound freaky, and look quite severe depending on which websites/sources you look up, but having attended 14 separate sessions, I have experienced very minimal bleeding, and more water has been expelled than blood (which I have been told is a good thing). Lily uses a sterilized acupuncture needle (each patient has their own labelled one) to tap the most problematic areas to allow for the bloodletting, which is uncomfortable for a few seconds until she reattaches the cup. Lily also told me that cups are never placed on the exact same spot consecutively to ensure no damage is done to the underlying skin, tissue, and blood vessels.  

Many of you are probably asking yourselves if this is really worth the time and effort, and if it actually works. For my personal health concerns, I haven't noticed a startling improvement, although I did notice feeling more alert towards the end of my first 10 sessions (10 sessions = 1 treatment). I'm also one of those people that always feels cold and is perpetually bundled up, but I started feeling "internally warmer", with much more internally-generated warmth in my hands and feet after my first course of treatment. Aside from the funny-looking circular bruises all over my back, shoulders and arms, the most marked side effects I noticed were fatigue and soreness, which did dissipate towards the end of my treatment. Lily advised me that these are completely normal symptoms, but as with any medical or therapeutic treatment - you have to be patient. It's not a single-dose cure-all treatment, but an alternative form of self-healing that takes time. As acupuncture is partially covered by my health benefits, I have decided to see it through another round of treatment to see if my health improves. While a balanced diet with vitamin supplements and regular exercise are the best course of treatment for someone like me, who is (thankfully) in decent health, I have also been dealing with an autoimmune disorder which remains untreatable, and figure I have nothing left to lose by trying an alternative form of therapy.    

For those of you still not convinced and in need of some empirical proof, I came upon an article from an esteemed scientific journal - the Public Library of Science, or PLoS ONE - published in 2012 that reviews all of the studies that have examined the efficacy of cupping therapy. Additionally, the authors only included studies with randomized control trails in their analysis based on their finding that many experiments that account for the success of cupping were quite poorly designed. What they were able to conclude after reviewing 135 experiments were a) cupping therapy does not yield any serious adverse side effects, and b) cupping therapy was significantly better at improving patients' health when combined with other TCM treatments compared to the other treatments alone. Combined therapy yielded more cured patients in these studies, especially those afflicted with shingles, facial paralysis (as with Bell's Palsy), acne, and spondylosis (or osteoarthritis of the neck). 

I hope my experiences and very brief presentation of some evidence in (slight) favour of cupping therapy have been informative. I would recommend cupping to anyone with My sources include my therapist Lily, WebMD, Wikipedia (with a grain of salt), and Cao, Li & Liu (2012), PLoS ONE. Feel free to leave comments, ask questions, or start a discussion in the comment field below!

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