My wife is seeing an acupuncturist (or Oriental medicine practitioner) for migraines, having given up on western medicine.
One of the procedures she does is prick the skin lightly and then apply suction to the area to draw out blood and fluids. I have never seen this procedure, but it sounds like she uses some sort of 2 inch diameter cylinder, open at the end placed against the skin, and a sort of piston that is screwed out away from the skin to create the suction that pulls the blood and fluid from the body. This is usually done at anywhere from to to a dozen or more sites, usually the forehead, all along the spine, or across the shoulders. My wife says the acupuncturist might then declare that the fluid is too yellow or too dark in color as evidence that she is pulling toxins from the body.
What I want to know is what is the name of this procedure. My wife says the acupuncturist calls the procedure “coupling”, but I can’t find anything on Google or Wikipedia by that name.
Actually, what I really want to know is whether there is any real benefit to this procedure. It is somewhat painful and leaves bruises and even some permanent scars. The “coupling” plus the panoply of herbal remedies is costing us over a thousand dollars a month. My wife still gets the headaches but says they are a bit less frequent and not as severe.
I second that. That’s what I’ve always heard of this procedure being called, though I’ve never heard of the screw-suction device you refer to, and instead am more familiar w/ a glass cup that you put some paper into, light it, and press against the skin in such a way as to not burn the skin. The combustion causes a partial vacuum.
Except I don’t see any reference to blood being drawn in that article. What the OP is describing sounds like old-fashioned “bloodletting”. I thought that went out in the Middle Ages.
I beg to differ. That’s a lot of money to be spending on quackery. To the OP: Tell your wife you have a set of these magical beans and you’ll give them to her if she stops throwing money out the toilet.
I suffer from migraines too, has she spoken to a doctor about all the different treatments out there? Has she gotten second opinions? Heck I’d take third and fourth opinions before I start trying some superstitious nonsense.
Tell her prayer costs less and take her to church.
In general, whenever a person says they’re pulling “toxins” or “impurities” out of your system, and you pay them money to do this, you should demand to know what toxin or impurity has been removed. Ask if you can keep the sample, as well (a doctor, dentist, or surgeon will often let you do this, or happily explain why they can’t let you keep it). If they can’t or won’t identify the exact toxin being removed, it is a good bet that they’re scamming you.
Ear candling and several colonic diets all make similar claims.
She may be an acupuncturist, and she may even be a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, but this is *not *a standard method of diagnosis within TCM. TCM diagnosis is done on the basis of Q&A, looking at the tongue, face and feeling the pulses in the wrist. A shiatsu practitioner might also feel different points along the body with the fingers.
“Bloodletting” is still done in TCM, but the amount of blood let is 3 or 4 drops coaxed out by a small pinprick, maximum. That’s a very rare treatment in TCM, reserved for only the most excess of heat or blood conditions. Believe me, they’re just as grossed out by medieval bloodletting as we are.
Cupping shouldn’t draw blood or fluid, although some people do suffer some light bruising. Gua sha, or scrapping of the skin with a rounded edge like a spoon or a jar lid, leaves horrible looking bruises and hickeys, but feels wonderful.
I’d ask her for more information about where she learned this technique, because it was not at Oriental Medicine School.
WhyNot,
ran a TCM school for several years, but was never a practitioner
While working in various childrens’ hospitals we saw the results of cupping done prior to addmission to the ICU for various illnesses. It never appeared to be of any value, and lead to child endangerment charges in more than one case.
It endangered the child on two levels, on causing severe bruising, to the point of actually compromising circulating blood volume and delaying needed treatment.
Point taken. I should have said, such a procedure (or a similar procedure) is known to exist in alternative medicine. I make no claims as to whether or not jebert’s wife’s practitioner actually believes that she’s helping, or just taking advantage of someone willing to pay that much for pain relief.
I won’t go into a rant about the lack of pain control by drug-law-scarred US doctors, but it’s a close thing.
Do ask your ‘wallet practitioner’ what medical trials have been done on this ‘money-making technique’.
Here’s another bunch of similar crime:
One variety of “operation” performed by these people is actually a medieval procedure that involves actual invasion of the body. Known as “cupping,” it consists of first making a tiny incision with a knife, usually without any sterilization, anesthetic, or antiseptic. Then a bit of cotton wool soaked in alcohol is placed upon a coin near or upon the cut, and the cotton is ignited. A small glass is then quickly inverted over the site. At this point the area is often covered with a cloth, as if performing a conjuring trick and thus concealing from sight the process that now takes place inside the inverted glass.
As the oxygen is consumed by the flame, a partial vacuum is created, drawing the flesh up into the glass. This causes the wound to bleed, and when the partial vacuum is thus equalized, the cloth is removed so that one can see that about one-fifth of the volume of the glass is now filled with blood. This process will, to an uninformed person, appear as if some magical force had brought the blood from the wound.