Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Cupping

Episode Date: August 11, 2016

Olympic athletes swear by it, but what really is the science behind cupping? Dr. Sydnee and Justin are looking into it, and the answer might (but probably won't) surprise you. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Sawbones is a show about medical history and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion It's for fun Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it just sit back relax and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth You're worth it All right from that weird growth. You're worth it. TAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAP Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour of Miss Guy Did Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. Sydney Olympic fever is sweeping the McAroy household.

Oh no. I'm just Charlie Sik. No she's- No I didn't know. Not again. She gets sick constantly. She actually has a chronic case of wanting to turn the Olympics off and watch talk with Stephens.

But she's still going through. To be fair, I feel like every time we turn the Olympics on, it is, I'm not saying that there are some sports that are boring. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that if you're a two year old, there are some things where there's enough action that it might hold your attention for a little bit. And then there are other things that it's probably difficult to understand what mommy and daddy are watching. Right. And there are definitely countries that are more boring than others for sure. I will say that.

I'm not saying that. You say, you say, every term we turn on the Olympics, it's like Austria and France playing water polo. And it's like, I'm good. Now, I have no qualms with Austria or France. I think they're both very exciting countries. I will say water polo is not the most exciting thing for two-year-old. That is what, that is the statement I will make. But if you play water polo, I'm sorry for your feelings.

There has been a sort of a synchronicity, I think of our show and the type of things we cover, which we kind of stumbled on, and then it turned into like a big discussion point because I asked you, we were watching the four-man relay, and we saw with swimming. With swimming, and we, yeah. We were watching the man swim, race,

the many man swim, race with the fast boys, the wet fast boys. We're really into sports. We love sports. No, but we were watching that. I saw these weird bruises all over Michael Phelps and I asked him, he like, what's wrong with American hero, Michael Phelps? America's pot Smoking Hero.

America's Pot Smoking Swim Boy, Michael Phelps has these round bruises all over him. And I asked you and you said, he's cupping. Capping. Capping. Now I knew, I knew from looking at Michael Phelps, just the pattern of the bruises.

I knew that was cupping. I can identify that. Now why he was cupping. I can identify that. Now, why he was cupping? I did not know. No, okay. See, that was the weird thing to me. Right. Because you think it would be like,

the thing is you're out there, your skin is very prominent because you're getting out there really wet and really fast. And people are going to see that. So it's like, you think maybe you could have had this cupping done to give it a time to heal over like he has cup hikis all over his body. He does not look good in photos.

It's going to look ridiculous in photos. So man, I hope it really works really well. Uh, I'm assuming part of that, my guess is that he wants people to see his cup hikis because it's like, I think it's kind of trendy and cool. But we'll talk about it. It seems to be, it is all over the place. I don't know where I think it is. I think it's kind of trendy and cool, but I'll talk about it. It seems to be, it is all over the place. I don't know where.

I think it is considered kind of trendy and cool among athletes. It was considered trendy and cool when Gwyneth Paltrow showed up at some sort of red carpet event. This has been several years ago with the cupping marks all down her spine. I do not remember this. Yeah, so it was very trendy, but it wasn't an athletic thing. It was considered like a kind of a new age healing thing. Right, right, right.

But if you don't know what cupping is, or if you think we're referencing something else that cupping could mean, Right, and we aren't. No, this is nothing like this. It's not the other thing. This is not this kind of bedroom stuff. For adult times.

Then not for adult times. Now I'm going to tell you what cupping is and why Michael Phelps might be doing it. Okay. Everyone has wanted us to talk about this. Yes. To be fair, can I just say that we also came up with this idea? Yeah, and then all of a sudden our tweets were filled with people asking about cupping. But here, just some of the people who recommended cupping. Okay. Michelle and Tila and Benjamin and Amanda and Ian and Maria and Ashley and Jenna and Linda and Maggie and Laura and Brooke and Sean and all of Twitter basically recommended that we talk about cupping. Right.

So thank you. Thank you all. You don't get complete credit because it was also our idea. But so, but thank you anyway. So what on God's agreement is cupping? Okay. So cupping is, I hate to even call it like a, it's a medical procedure.

It is something that you're doing for perceived medical benefit. Okay. And the procedure is this. You take some sort of cup, usually glass. You can use plastic. There are other ones traditionally. It would have been a horn part of a horn. And you take this cup and you are going to put them on

the body. Usually like the back is where you see this most commonly, but it can be on the arms or the legs, even the face nowadays, anywhere. And you are going to apply suction somehow. Now, how you apply suction to that cup, it just depends on what kind of machine you're using. Traditionally, the way you would do that is create negative pressure inside the cup by lighting a little flame inside of it. Creates vacuum by burning oxygen and yeah. There you go and then put it on the skin. And so then it kind of sucks the skin up into the cup, right? You leave it there for between five and fifteen minutes depending on exactly what you're doing and how long and where. minutes depending on exactly what you're doing and how long and where, and then you take it off, and you've got a big hiki on your back. Not always. Not everybody has such a, but

I don't want to say violent reaction, but such a dramatic reaction. Okay. But it can leave that. Now, there are different kinds of cupping. What I just described is what we would probably call dry cupping, which means you take the whatever the cup is, you create the vacuum and you apply it, it is listed as not being painful. I think it would be that good kind of pain. You know that tattoo pain at first before the tattoo pain gets really annoying. Yeah, people don't describe it like that. They talk about that it's a pressure that you can feel the skin being lifted. It's definitely a pressure,

but nobody, I didn't read any description of it as painful. And it can be dry-cubbing, this specifically can be used with acupuncture. So you can place the acupuncture needle and put the cup over it, is used sometimes. There, you can also add massage oil to kind of lubricate the skin and allow the cup to kind of move across the skin a little easier

I would think that would create none as as type of a seal I see I thought that too, but I saw that mentioned multiple places that that would help move the cup a little bit Because I guess there's one there's one way where you can do the dry cupping and then kind of walk the cups down your back Yeah as part of it When you use fire to create the vacuum, you can also call it fire cupping. Wow, that's very dramatic. It sounds very exciting. Did you have a fire cupping today?

That sounds like if I was going to get peak physical performance. When I got the pool, I'd want to go to fire cupping. Fire cupping. Now, wet cupping is something entirely different. That's the adult one. No, but it does sound like the adult one. Wet cupping or hijama is not practiced everywhere. You can find this in some parts of the Middle East and actually in Finland as well

and some saunas. They do this wet cupping. I'm going to tell you what it is and then you can tell me what this sounds kind of like. You're going, it's the same sort of procedure, except you're going to apply the cup first, get a little bit of suction going. Take the cup off, make multiple small cuts in the skin in that place, and then put the cup back on.

Oh, so definitely bloodletting, 100%. It's, yeah, it's basically like bloodletting, but with suction. Not basically sweetheart. Like, we're blood, it's basically like bloodletting, but with suction. Not basically sweetheart. Like we're blood, it's turbo bloodletting on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on,

on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, practice of stealing your blood, to make your body run better, to make you healthy. These, a cupping can also be combined with something called Moxie Bustion. Whoa, what? I had it, yeah, so this was new to me too. It's a good word, I'll say that. This is the practice of burning mugwort.

Okay. Near or maybe on a patient's skin. It's used all on its own for healing purposes, but you could also take a piece of my work, put it on the skin, and light it on fire underneath one of the cups, and then you've got cupping plus moxie bustsion. And it's very helpful at that point.

And then it's definitely very effective. There you go. Yes. Now, cupping is very old. I believe... Coughing has been a long time for a really long time. If I were to guess, I would guess it is back to China, because I think this is part of traditional Chinese medicine, how? Capping is very old. I believe. Capping has been along for a really long time. If I were to guess, I would guess it dates back to China because I think this is part traditional Chinese medicine, right?

It is. It is. It dates back thousands of years to ancient China. But at first, some of the original mentions of Capping have a very specific purpose. So you could take, like I mentioned, like an animal horn back then is probably what you would have used or like a piece of bamboo and either boil water in them or again light a fire in them to create a vacuum create suction and apply them to something like a like a boil on your skin is what some of the first descriptions of this were for. Okay. The reason being was it was to try to like draw it to a head

and draw the pus out. Okay. So you were creating a vacuum for a very specific reason. That makes sense to me. Yeah. That kind of does make sense. I don't know if the if the pressure you applied would be enough, but you know what, it would probably multiple episodes of this. It may help with that. So it's sort of like a non chemical version of pure a poor, perfect strip. You're just drawing the stuff out of there. Yeah. It was suction instead of like tape. Yeah, right.

Instead of sticky. Yeah. So it was almost like a surgical tool, kind of like a semi-surgical type thing. The first mention is in the Boschew, which is written during the Han dynasty. And then you continue to see it kind of pop up in Chinese texts, ancient Chinese texts, for other things. So like we see these original mentions as almost like a surgical kind of thing. And then you see it mentioned for poisonous snake bites. I think the same kind of idea to like suction the poison out. The same reasoning somebody

is using when they try to put their mouth on a snake bite and suck the poison out. Perfect. Which you shouldn't do by the way. Do not do that. Don't ever do that. That you see it mentioned for other things as well, like for chronic cough, for tuberculosis, for headaches, for abdominal pain, for dizziness. So you start to see these mentions of it for things that aren't necessarily specific to the skin. This continues. This trend of cupping just various places on the body begins to grow as we move through medicine.

So we see it mentioned in the Eberspapyrus as well, specifically wet cupping dates back that far, so bleeding with the application of suction. And then the Greeks practiced it too. Apocrates was a big advocate of both dry and wet cupping. Galen was a big advocate of it. No, he's got to get in the mess. Gaelin was a was a big advocate of it. When you read back in one of the ancient Greek texts, one of the medical texts, they talk about scarification with cupping so that the cutting of the skin, scarification making cuts in the skin and cupping can possess the power of evacuating a fending matter from the head of diminishing pain

of the same part. So diminishing pain of your head, lessening inflammation. They thought it was good at restoring your appetite. That if you had a weak stomach, it was helpful for a vertigo for drawing up deep-seated fending matter to the surface. Okay.

I mean, timeically, yes, I guess. For himmages, for promoting menstrual evacuation. No, thank you. Yeah, for arresting the tendency to putrification, Elaine Rieger's accelerated and moderating the crisis of diseases, basically, oh, fixing you if you're too sleepy. Okay. You have a propensity for sominalins,

a cup that will fix that. I mean, it will temporarily certainly. So basically dry or bloody, they say, all of these methods with cups, all of these things with cups can be healed. Yeah, that sounds suspiciously to me, like a cure-all Sydney, and as we all know, at this point,

cure-all's, cure all's cure nothing. The ancient Romans continue these practices, especially at bathhouses. This was something you could have had done. Sure. Yeah. Why not? You're short-thirty off. Why not get crazy in there? Which seems like kind of a bummer to me because like I always kind of thought bath

houses were really relaxing and chill. No, I've seen some, especially in like Europe, where they like beat the heck out of you with like like sticks and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Some sawna. They hit you branches or whatever. I don't know. I saw Michael Paling and around the world, 90 days getting the crap beat out with sticks. Did, did we see that on three sheets, too?

Did we see that? And any more. You know what? It may be kind of a popular. Yeah. The can't any more. Dane did too. Let's watch this guy get beaten with sticks kind of

thing. Maybe this isn't something they really do. Maybe it's just for people trying to make TV shows. Not what please you were. But at the bathhouses, the Romans did definitely practice copying as well. That we found remnants of cups at Pompeii. So we know that, you know, they were using that. I think I'm getting a lot of life friends in lava while they were getting cupping, mid cupping, though in very upsetting. Celsus mentioned that it was better than blood

letting. So if you, you know, there's something that traditionally you would have just cut somebody for do cupping instead. He especially liked it for the removal of poisons or toxins introduced into the body, which again, it's sort of even though that wouldn't work I can see where you're coming from from like a very physical perspective Like well, there's poison in the body looks just suck it out. I'm like with a snake bite. Yeah, I mean, it's the same same kind of idea And a lot of these reasoning so why were they doing all this?

Why did they think all this work for all these different diseases? You have to understand this is based on the humoral concept of medicine. Your body is out of balance with the different humors in it, so we use the suction to get the bad ones out. Exactly. So the four humors, blood and bile and flim and blood and yellow bile and black bile and flim, excuse me, two bile. Those four need to be in balance, and if you're sick, it's because they're out of balance. And you can remove them by giving somebody something that'll make them puke or poop or pee or spit stuff up or you can bleed them or cupping was in the same family. So you could suck things out with cupping or you could even cut them and put the cups on them. And then, you know, it's a combo.

So these are just, that's where this fits into medicine. It's a way of adjusting humors. Which like if that isn't set off alarm bells for you, you should. Yeah, because we don't, that's not a real thing. That's not real thing. That's not the hum, that concept of medicine. I mean, yes, we have blood. Yes, we have flim, yes, we have blood.

Yes, we have flim. Yes, we have bile. But that was not, that was not accurate. Paracelsis, who we've talked about before, advised it specifically for two things. I don't know where. When, and now you've got to remember again, too, though, when I talk about, you know, that you should use cupping for a toothache, that didn't even necessarily mean that you would put the cup anywhere close to your tooth because it's all based on this humorous concept of medicine. So like your tooth hurts. So draw some, you know, draw the inflammation away from it by putting a cup on your back somewhere.

So, said the, I understand this was happening in ancient times but like how did we get to this still being a thing in modern times? Well I'm gonna fill in on that Justin but first why don't you follow me to the billing department? Let's go. I'm Allegra Ringo and I'm Renee Colbert and we host a podcast called Can I Pat Your Dog. Renee, can I tell you about a dog I met this week? I wish that you would. In turn though, can I tell you about a dog hero? May I tell you?

About a dog breed and a segment I like to call a month minute? I would love that. Can we maybe talk about some dog tech? Could we have some cool guests on like Lynn Manuel Miranda, Nicole Byer and Anne Wheaton? I mean, yeah, absolutely. I'm in, you're on board. What do you say we do all of this and put it into a podcast? Yeah, okay, you think? Perfect. Should we call it like, I don't know, can I pet your dog? Sure. Alright, what do you say we put it on every Tuesday on Maximum Fun? Or on iTunes? Sounds good to me. Meeting's over. So Cindy, we were talking about how cupping existed in ancient times, but obviously it's

still kicking. So how did that happen? Right. So as we move forward in history, there are lots of mentions of cupping, like, continuing in popular use. And again, part of this is because this concept of medicine of the four humors continued. And I should mention too, when we talk about like with origins in traditional Chinese medicine, we're not talking about the humors, but we are talking about like the vital force,

the life force, gene drawn, exactly through the body. So a similar concept different, but similar kind of idea. And the 1600s, there are many mentions for it used for a lot of different kinds of wounds. Specifically, so let's say that you're you just got cut on, you know, your arm, your left arm, and it's bleeding a whole lot. One thought was that you could do cupping like far away, like on the right arm to try to draw blood away from the place that was bleeding so it would stop bleeding. Okay.

It was a kind of idea. Not really how bodies were doing anything, but go for it. Now, on the flip side, you could use it over a wound if you thought there were too many humors in the wound Which proud what what I think they were meaning was infection or inflammation if something looks infected or inflamed Your your concept maybe there's too much humor in there. So get it out. It's bubbling up to the surface To get it out get it at cup it and then you'll be fine. So gritty

They would also use it over a wound to keep it open was a common theme to, you know, keep something from healing to clean it out, which that's like, that's not, that's not a crazy idea really. For some ones, we do, we do leave them open. So that's not, that's not actually completely off base. Now, the thought process, like, let's not go crazy. Okay. Like, they weren't doing it for the right reasons, right reasons. Like, let's not, let's not get these. These were not all the right reasons. It's not doing it for all the right reasons.

They were widely practiced by barbers who of course were surgeons back then. Right. So they were doing a lot of cupping. Paray, who we've talked about a lot, one of our early, you know, fathers of surgery of our surgical technique, advise cupping at the neck and shoulders. If you have an eye wound, okay. Again, this idea of drawing down the emotion inflammation. He probably tried the eye thing once.

He was like, you know, where a cupping would be great on the eye. Let's give it a whirl. Yeah. Okay. It's like that scene in hostile. I don't think that would actually happen. Medicine before the 1600s was like a scene in on. Most of the uses, like I said, were just employing the cup somewhere to kind of move the humors around instead of bloodletting or making something puke. But again, they were still doing the bleeding with it. So it was often like, well, don't just do bloodletting,

cut them and then suck, cut them and suck on their skin. I don't know, apply a cup. It was also advised, there was one surgeon who wrote that it was really good to use for, if you have a depression in your skull, as in like a depressed area, like a dent. Like if you have a dent in a car as in like a depressed area, like a dent. Like if you have a dent in the car, we just bang it back out.

Yeah, we'll pop it out like one of those suction things that you put on your car and then just say, yeah, get out. Poof, yeah, you do that. But for your head. But not if there's a fracture. Oh sure. They were quick to say that.

Not if the bones actually broke in, but if it's just kind of dent it, you could just kind of like pop it back into the box. We're not crazy. We know this won't work if it's broken. If it's broken, then just drill a hole in it. We know how to do that already. Yeah, we're experts.

It was also very popular again for any kind of venomous wound. So we've gone beyond snakes. Now we're scorpion spiders, bees, hornets, anything that was thought to be venomous. Cuppet. It was also used on tumors. There was a belief that, I mean, because you have to understand, you don't, you don't, when I say tumors, a lot of people are thinking, well, how did they know they were there? At the time, since there would have been no treatments, more understanding, really, of cancer, you could get metastatic tumors that you could see very easily. Or things that got so big that you could see them. And so there was a belief that whatever was inside the tumor is something unnatural and

diseased and bad and dangerous and evil and dirty. Yes, I mean, yeah. Yeah, but the idea was that if you could just kind of suction it out of there, get the evil out, get the evil out of the tumor Then it would be okay So you could use cupping there to try to like get all the stuff inside the tumor to come out It was generally regarded as the second choice to bloodletting Mm-hmm. So like if you're your best bet is bloodletting, but in certain conditions Was it go with the old safe standard first?

Try and true bloodletting, it's not gonna let us down. Just leech somebody. Just leech somebody. But, you know, there are these experimental for edge of medicine techniques we've been in playing with, where we put a cup on you and wait.

There were, it's funny because there was one mention where somebody actually said at one point, you know, we tend to use a lot of bloodletting when someone is bleeding. You know, when somebody gets like a wound, they get cut or something, we bleed them more. And maybe that isn't, maybe we shouldn't. Hey guys, maybe we should cup them and said, we'll talk for a second. But it wasn't, it's not like that was widely adopted. It's not like everyone, you know, you're right.

Shut up, Jerry. If the problem is they're bleeding, maybe more bleeding isn't the solution. Yeah, not. But somebody thought about it. Somebody's like, maybe the cupping instead. Cause everybody back there was vampires. But you would prefer cupping.

You would for a few conditions. One would be what we would think of now as a stroke. If somebody has a stroke instead of bloodletting, you might consider cupping them for pain in general, I guess, because if they're already hurting, you don't want to cut them. Cut them. Yeah. Cut them instead. And then hysteria. So thank you for that. I don't think I covered that when we did our hysteria episode. Yeah, I don't believe so now. So hysteria, if you haven't listened to our episode, if you're not familiar with the concept, was a fake made up disease for women. When I got out of the line. Yes, men made it up for women to explain when, you know, we're just

all crazy and emotional. Right. And our uterus is just go wandering around our bodies, making us crazy. That was hysteria. So why not? It's a fake disease. Let's do a fake treatment. Yeah. Let's cup them. It's a beautiful match. Um, in plague times you could also try cupping a bubo. That was one one use of cupping. You know, the big giant swollen nasty lymph nodes that people would get and their minds and armpits and everywhere. And you could just try to cup it. Sure. So why are we still doing this?

I thought your sources tell me that because I have no idea. This is still moving forward in history. Coughing is still practiced in alternative medicine. It is still a part of traditional Chinese medicine, but then like a lot of things that kind of disappeared in the West and then resourged, I would put cupping among those things. If you're interested in like who does it, the same traditional Chinese medicine practitioners might do cupping. And then if you find people in the West who do acupuncture, they may also provide

this, this not necessarily, but you see people who do one commonly, you know, license to do the other. What do they advise it for? It's a cool licensing board who are really showing those. Yeah, I guess you have to observe somebody do it. I don't know. If you observe somebody do it, you still want to, then yeah. I don't know. I mean, what to license them for it. I guess. I mean. Just watch them. Make sure. I don't want the homeopathy cops after me.

If I put an unlicensed cup on somebody and try to burn it. You know what? The homeopathy cops can come after me anytime they want to. Oh, please. I have some words for them. It's advised for everything from arthritis to asthma, colds, indigestion. We need a better word than advised because that does sound like like by who exactly Sydney like advising sounds like somebody behind a table somewhere is recommending this happen. By people who get paid to do it, that's who recommends it.

Okay. All right. You know what I'm saying? And again, and you see this huge list, like every where you go, someone who is either like a proponent of certain complimentary and alternative medicines who is writing about,

cupping or someone who, like I said, gets paid to do it, will tell you different things it can be used for. Like I saw anemia and hemophilia listed, which specifically with the hemophilia I probably wouldn't do wet cupping. That would be my advice personally. For infertility, for acne, headaches, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, or constipation,

that always makes me raise an eyebrow. Like just either. I mean, there might be a physical way you could use cupping with the constipation angle. You could just kind of like, get it out. Does that work? Well, honey, I mean, if that's what you think, why don't we just use a plunger?

I mean, that does work in cartoons, some of the more ribbons. Right. What cartoons are you watching? Some of the more ribbled ones, please move on. Weight loss, it's all, I saw that, it's good for weight loss. And then you know somebody's trying to fatigue, menstrual cramps, muscle cramps, injuries, and to increase blood flow to the muscles of athletes, especially the muscles that you use a lot that might particularly

get strained or sprained or injured, or if you do have an injury that needs to be healed faster with increased blood flow, this is why athletes are using it. This is the belief. Sometimes you may see a cupping pattern that would correspond to the specific muscle group that that athlete may use more because of their chosen sport. I do think I know it's a lot of like shoulder and bicep.

Yeah. Upper body, kind of cupping. Because especially if they either thought those muscles had been stressed or strained or injured or just because those are the muscles that they're going to use a lot of, that kind of thing. But again, because it's also based on this idea of vital force and energy and then this concept of humors and all that, it's also, it's not just like a physical thing, not just

blood flow, but you see things like, well, and at the same time, we'll remove pathogenic factors like wind and cold and damp and heat from your body, and we'll allow your pores to open more so that other pathogens can escape through them, which is not how bacteria works by the by. And you see, like on some of the websites that offer this therapy where you can sign up and go and have this done,

they'll tell you that it can also remove congested blood and humors. Which is not, I mean, that's not a question. We're not confused as to whether or not humors are right. That's not up for debate. That one settled. There are lots of other things that I know people will argue and you question and well, maybe that's true Maybe it's not But humor is not one of them. It's also an alternative therapy that is used for cancer

Get bent. They now have small silicone cups that you that won't leave marks So you can do that if you don't want the bruising there actually is an option that probably won't provide probably won't cause the bruising And they can even do those on your face if you want to. Sure. So, the studies. Yeah, like, it doesn't work, does it? So, any study that they've done huge meta-analyses of these studies, they did a big one in 2012.

And what they basically said was, the majority of studies don't show any harm, but don't really show any benefit. There have been small studies that have shown that it helped with certain conditions, not with athletic performance. So that has never been proven. So what Michael Phelps is doing, I can't vouch for,

unless he just likes it. Yeah. But the studies that have shown that were mentioned specifically by the authors of this meta-analysis to be very small and highly biased. They found them to be not necessarily appropriately conducted to remove bias. It's not a shock. So I would say that at this point there is no good evidence that cupping does anything. There are some studies that suggested it was possible. And so I could at least try to be nonbiased. I could at least say more study is necessary.

If we really want to prove that this does anything for anybody, for any condition at all, we're gonna need to do a lot more. But this is a hard thing to study because if you're gonna do this versus a placebo, that's what we do, right? We like with a medicine, we give some people a fake pill and some people the real pill and see who gets better. How do you do fake cupping? The good question, I don't know.

It's a really difficult thing to control for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is part of why people say, well, we know it works and you're never going to get a good study on it because we can't make a good study on it. So just trust us, it I mean the same could be said of acupuncture right acupuncture is really hard to do too They do that there is some benefit of acupuncture right? We that's another episode Yeah, that's that's a whole other thing But they they found a way to do with acupuncture by not doing it on the right places Okay, yeah, that's and they'll call it like the sham acupuncture, which means that it's the yes

You got needles in you, but they weren't the right places. I don't know how you do that with cupping, because it's not necessarily one place anyway. They're not, they can't, they don't have to be specific points. I don't know. And also, just on the, on the other hand, even though overall, it's not found to be detrimental, there have been cases where it's been dangerous, either because the bruising was so severe, because they actually did like the cutting as well. So they damaged the skin or it got infected. Also burns. You can see some pretty horrendous looking

burns out there from people who just weren't very good at it. And instead of just creating the vacuum and putting it on there actually got the cup hot enough that it seared the skin. So you can see some pretty nasty burns. So if this is something you're going to have done, I want you, you should be going to somebody who's done it many, many times and it's very good at it at least. So is Michael Phelps like a goofball? Is there anything any reason he could be doing that? So I've read a lot of articles by people who are into athletics as to why athletes would continue to do this with no good evidence that says they should. Because, and the idea is this, even if it is placebo effect, even if it is just that strong belief that it did something for them, makes them think they feel stronger or faster or

whatever, when we're talking about these sort of athletes who operate at this level, one hundredth of a second, one tiny inch faster than everybody else, one millimeter faster than everybody else, makes a difference. And if placebo effect is all it is, even if that is the truth, if it works, it works. So just that psychological edge that they might feel they have, because of cupping, even though it's not really the cupping, maybe enough to drive them over the edge and make them win. It's sort of like, have you seen the Kinesio tape that everybody has on them? Have you seen anybody with brightly colored neon tape

on their bodies? So that's kind of in this same category. This tape was created to relieve like pain and pressure on muscles by just gently lifting the skin off of the mouth like you apply it in specific patterns and ways. It's not just random. It's very specifically placed by trainers and people who know how to do it. And it's supposed to improve your range of motion and then relieve this pain and pressure. The studies on it are incredibly weak.

It's never been definitively proven to do any of that. But you see tons of athletes wearing it. And the same argument could be made. If you think it gives you an edge, maybe it does. Right. So just don't tell Michael Phelps. It's like a magic feather kind of vibe. So what I'm saying is,

listen, everybody at home, if you're a friend of Michael Phelps, don't tell him about this podcast. We all got to keep it a secret from Michael Phelps. Keep it a secret because it may be that's enough. And if it doesn't harm anybody, except it does, you just said that. Except unless you get burned. Burned or bruised terribly.

I also would rather not have all those purple hikis on my back, but that's just me. So that's the thing. I don't know that there's any evidence that says, cupping does anything. I'm sorry if this is your thing. I know that this is many people's thing. This is going to be somebody's thing. So sorry in advance for that. Sorry in advance for that.

If you don't get hurt by it and it makes you feel better, you know, more power to you. But if you're doing it instead of seeking some sort of medical treatment for, for whatever your condition is, I would not advise that at all. I'd get the to a doctor. Folks, that's going to do it for us. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to our program. Thanks the maximum fun that we're for letting this be a part of their extended podcasting family. You can find a ton of great shows at maximumfun.org. It shows like Schmanners, which is a show made by my brother and his wife Teresa, who's an etiquette expert,

and they try to navigate those waters. It's a fascinating show. And there's a ton more on there. Cindy makes one of her sisters called Stillbuffering and my brother's and I make some. So get on there, maximumfund.org. It's called My Brother, My Brother Me. Thanks, dear.

It's pretty good. It's all right. Thank you to the taxpayers for letting us use their song medicines as the intern out show of our program. We've been mentioning it, but if you haven't checked out my dad and my Uncle Michael's podcast, Court of Pointed, sort of a legal version of Saul Bones, check it out. Check it out. Follow my tunes.

Folks, that's going to do it for us until next week. My name is Justin McAroy. I'm Sydney McAroy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!