What Is Cupping Therapy and How Can This Practice Help You?
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a professional athlete or a fitness enthusiast. You will experience fatigue and pain, among other things, at some point.
The good news is you have many options for treatment, and they don’t need to involve medications. One of these methods dates back to hundreds of years: cupping therapy.
What is cupping therapy?
Let’s begin the discussion about the practice with the most basic question: what is cupping therapy?
It is a traditional alternative medicine practice that involves creating suctions on the affected areas of the body to promote healing. Because of this, others call it suction cup therapy.
There are also different variations of it:
Dry cupping
Wet cupping
Fire cupping
Moving cupping
Fixed cupping
The primary difference between them is that in wet cupping, the practitioner also draws blood from the skin.
During dry cupping, the process may include the following steps:
The patient lies on a flat surface with the back exposed.
The practitioner places cups (usually glass) on the skin.
To create suction, the practitioner may apply heat to the cup or use a device for that.
The cups may remain in place for five to ten minutes.
After this, the practitioner may then apply bandages on the affected areas to avoid infections.
As the cups stay on the skin, it creates a vacuum, drawing the skin and the blood vessels. For this reason, the practice may leave temporary bruising.
Cupping therapy: Its beginnings
A lot of people attribute cupping therapy to the Chinese, but in reality, its history is unclear. According to a 2017 review, it may also have origins (or at least have been practiced) in Egypt. Back there, the term used is “hijama.”
The same article also cited some of the earliest mentions of the practice. For example, ancient Egyptians talked about it during 1550 BC. Hieroglyphics recorded something about the topic.
The Brought to Life Science Museum, meanwhile, said that in China cupping might have already been popular in 281 CE. However, it’s not exclusive to the country. There were at least similar practices even among Native Americans.
Most historical documents about it tend to agree on the following:
Suction cup therapy was already around during the time of Hippocrates, the father of medicine. He might have even promoted it in his works.
The uses of the therapy are the same. For instance, practitioners would apply cupping to remove toxins and treat a variety of ailments. These include sore muscles and chest pain.
It was widely popular until the late 1800s when it experienced a decline. It experienced a revival over the last few years.
Benefits of cupping therapy
If you engage in physical activities, you need to invest in the right gear, to improve your grip and protect your hand from injuries when bicycling, and a knee brace when running. It doesn’t mean, though, that you are immune to pain and discomfort.
Sometimes your activities can induce muscle soreness or aches, and lower back pain that can reduce your quality of life. In these situations, cupping can help you.
This study in the Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine outlines some of the benefits of cupping:
1. Increased Nitric Oxide Production
Cupping might help improve blood flow in different ways. One of these is by increasing nitric oxide. Also known as NO, it helps dilate the blood vessels, allowing blood to circulate properly. It then promotes the delivery of the much-needed nutrients, such as proteins, for recovery.
2. Opioid Production
The study also revealed that one of the cupping therapy benefits is producing opioids. It’s a substance that creates morphine-like effects. In turn, it stimulates relaxation and pain relief.
3. Modulation of Immune Response
When you suffer from an injury, your immune system gets into work. The problem is it can develop pain pathways and inflammation.
In the study, the researchers shared that it can help modulate the immune response. It can then help in managing pain and even inflammation.
4. Increased Production of Red Blood Cells
RBCs are the types of cells that deliver oxygen to different parts of the body, such as the muscles. If your muscles are at rest, they don’t allow blood to flow properly.
It can be taxing to your body once you engage in physical activity. By then, it demands a lot of oxygen. By increasing RBCs, cupping can provide oxygen to minimize the feelings of pain after.
How does Integrative Health & Sports Medicine implement the practice?
Integrative Health is one of the only clinics that use cupping therapy to enhance sports performance, relieve muscle pain and fatigue, and help remove toxins, to name a few.
It provides different techniques, from wet to fixed or fire, according to the needs of the patient. However, it combines this practice with body work.
Body work involves therapeutic touch, such as massages. This process further releases tension in the muscles and corrects misalignments.
Combining them both alleviate pain relief and other aches much faster. The patient can experience better comfort and a wider range of motion.
Sometimes the best way to achieve healing is to go back to basics. It includes applying age-old techniques like cupping.
To learn more about this practice and the best treatment plan, contact Integrative Health and Sports Medicine today.