Cupping therapy involves placing cups on the skin to create suction. This suction increases blood circulation to the area where the cups are placed. This may relieve muscle tension, improving overall blood flow and promoting cell repair. It may also help form new connective tissues and create new blood vessels in the tissue. Cupping therapy is an ancient, holistic method for treating various illnesses, diseases, and conditions, including hip pain, shoulder pain and low back pain. While the exact origin of cupping therapy remains controversial, its use has been documented in Egyptian and Chinese medical practices dating back as early as 1,550 B.C. While cupping therapy has fallen in and out of favour throughout the centuries, it’s currently making a resurgence thanks to prominent athletes and health-conscious celebrities sporting the distinctive red circular cupping marks (not bruises!). 

While there are multiple techniques and methods involved in cupping therapy, here at Featherston Street Pain Clinic, we specifically focus on ‘dry’ cupping created using negative pressure suction. Our practitioners use an apparatus to create a gentle suction that draws your skin upward into the cup. (Your skin is not broken at any time in the process.)

What Does Cupping Therapy Feel Like?

As suction is directly applied to the skin, there’s an initial tightness sensation as the skin is drawn into the cup; the feeling passes quickly as your practitioner moves on to place the next cup. As the practitioner repeats the suction process, they will check to ensure the cups aren’t too intense. 

While traditionally, heat was used to create a vacuum, we use a suctioning apparatus that draws the air out of the cup. As time passes, your body will begin to acclimate to the feeling of the cups. The amount of cups required is dependent on the area of complaint. When being introduced to cupping therapy for low back pain, fewer cups with less pressure will be used. The cups will be placed for 5-20 minutes; afterwards, the practitioner will release the pressure in the cup, which often gives a calming, relaxing effect. Depending on the type and severity of your low back pain, a singular cup may be used with the practitioner gliding it across your skin, commonly known as ‘running cupping’. Running cupping has been shown to locally and systemically remove toxins by stimulating the immune response by dispersing uric acid, a natural waste product from the digestion of certain foods. 

We tend to attribute it to sore muscles or stiff joints when we experience low back pain, neck pain, or shoulder pain. However, many chronic back pain symptoms are caused by a thin casing of connective tissue surrounding and holding every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fibre and muscle in place: the fascia. While receiving little attention in the modern western world, fascia plays a critical role in every movement you make. 

Like ligaments and tendons, fascia is primarily composed of elastin and collagen, making it flexible and stretchy when the body moves. Interestingly, fascia also contains pain receptors and mechanoreceptors, which detect stretching or changes in pressure within the body. For this reason, some scientists consider the body’s fascia to be one giant sensory organ! Healthy fascia has a smooth and slippery texture and can shift its consistency between a gel-like state and a more fluid one when needed. However, when unhealthy, fascia can become sticky, clumpy, tight, and flaky when unhealthy. It forms restrictions, adhesions and distortions, causing various problems, including chronic back pain.

What is Fascia?

Have you eaten chicken breast or lamb shoulder recently? Notice that clear-like film that covers it? That’s fascia. At the same time, it looks like one sheet of tissue, but in reality, it’s made of multiple layers of liquid called hyaluron, intertwining all the muscle fibres. This provides the internal structure of the body, rather than it being just the skeleton that holds the body up, the facia and connecting soft tissue that keeps the skeleton upright also. The fascial tissue has so many nerve endings it’s almost as sensitive as skin. The fascial tissue is designed to stretch as you move. However, when the fascia is stressed, it tightens up. If the fascia dries up and tightens around the muscle fibre, it can impact mobility and cause painful knots to develop.

Even the most casual glance at research into the amount of pain we suffer confirms the truth. We struggle as much now with pain in our backs, joints, spines, and feet as we did with dental decay in the 1600s. But why on earth, in an age of electric vehicles and space travel, do we struggle with old-fashioned pain. The answer to that is a long story, but here we will look at three of the key reasons we struggle so much to manage pain in our modern world.

Number One: Pain is Invisible 

It is pretty obvious and easy to diagnose a black eye, even without a medical degree. The same is true if you have eczema, a common cold, a bloody nose, and many other outwardly visible health issues. Pain, on the other hand, is entirely invisible. Not only is pain invisible to the person who is suffering from the pain, but the pain is also invisible to other people and is even often invisible to the eyes and ears of modern medicine. There is no scan or blood test to diagnose you with a migraine. An x-ray or an MRI scan will rarely show you the cause of back pain. If you have heel pain, there is no modern scan that is sensitive enough to show the subtle buildup of scar tissue in your foot, and there was undoubtedly no blood test to confirm the diagnosis. We have a long history of struggling with invisible causes of disease and unwellness.

Up until the last 200 years, millions upon millions of deaths each year at the hands of bacteria and viruses that we didn’t even know existed. Long after figuring out how to defend ourselves from wild animals, we struggled with microbes primarily because we couldn’t see them and didn’t know they existed. This situation is not too dissimilar from where we find ourselves with pain in the 21st century; we cannot see it; therefore, we struggle to manage it. Even the experts struggle to find much agreement over its true causes.

Pain is complex – it’s a huge topic – but the good news is that some general rules form a sound basis for navigating your way out of most aches and pains in the longer term. Let’s get started.

Rule 1 – If there is no significant medical issue, assume there is a weakness.

If all your scans and blood tests have come back clear, you probably have some weakness in your area of pain. You won’t be too surprised when I tell you a significant part of the solution will likely be strength work. The only note of caution is that if the tissues are inflamed, they may not respond to strength work without a bit of treatment beforehand.

Working on pain is a bit like working on dental issues; sometimes, you need to get through the treatment side of things before you go away and work on the big picture. Pain relief methods are an essential step towards being able to strengthen your weakened painful areas without risking making them worse. But once that is done the majority of pains relate to some need for increased strength and muscle support. 

Rule 2 – Be willing to think outside the box.

If you have been doing the same treatments with the same providers for a long time and aren’t seeing progress, be willing to try out new things. Doctors are great (mine saved my life once), but only a tiny part of their training relates to pain management. Physios are great, but sometimes there is more to pain relief than exercise prescription. Chiropractors are great, but not all pain comes from the joints. Osteopaths are great, but not all pains will respond to a gentle approach. Flexibility and open-mindedness are essential qualities when it comes to working with stubborn pain issues.

Age is just a number. At least, that is what we would love to believe. However, as time goes on the body faces inevitable wear and tear. At the same time, this doesn’t mean you don’t have some control when it comes to aging gracefully and maintaining your independence, mobility, and function.

Recent research indicates that a reduced gait speed is associated with adverse health outcomes, including an increased risk of disease, falling, disability, and hospitalization. Overall, gait speed assesses a person’s functional mobility. Studies further show that decreased functional mobility may be associated with an increased mortality risk. So, let’s dive into this topic a little further. What is the connection between gait speed and mortality? And what can you do to gain back control and improve your life at any age?