Cupping and the Olympics

So if you have caught anything of the Olympics this year, one of the big story lines has been red circles on all the athletes. What is it? Cupping!

We’ve got CBS, CNN, NY Times, Vox, and NPR. They all want to know “What is it?” “Why are they doing it?” “Does it actually work?” “Can it give you that edge?”

So it’s great to see some publicity about a modality of Chinese medicine. A lot of community acupuncture clinics don’t utilize cupping because they prefer to stick with only acupuncture. Our clinic, however, likes to make use of cupping because we like it for ourselves personally, many of our clients do too and we keep it in the expedited flow that our clinic treatments run on.

Bear in mind cupping is not painful but it does have a peculiar intensity. So expect that. It’s normal.

Overall, cupping can be helpful in a number of issues: muscle fatigue due to exercise; muscle injury; tight/stressed out shoulders; occipital (base of skull) tension that leads to headaches/migraines. And sometimes it just feels really great to have something that digs deep into the muscles and brings some blood into the area.

There is no extra fee at our clinic for using cupping, everything still runs on the same $15-$35 sliding scale. We feel if it’s good enough to be helpful for you then it should be included in the price of the treatment. Also, we will never “force” cupping upon you. If it’s your first treatment and you’re a little weirded out by acupuncture in general or you’ve had it before and didn’t jive with it, then just let us know and we’ll stick with the acupuncture.