Additional cupping info.

[Guest guest]

This too is from the Shanghai College Comprehensive Text:

 

" Cups need only be retained in place from 5-15 minutes, depending on

the strength of suction. Especially in hot weather, or when cupping

over shallow flesh, the duration of treament should not be too long. "

(p. 445.)

[Guest guest]

Well, this is very interesting and important for proper application of

cupping, but I still don't get a clear picture from the quoted text of

the actual mechanism by which this is suppose to work within the content

of TCM! It sounds more like its roots came from the very ancient

shamanic idea of " drawing out " the " evil spirit " that has invaded the

body and is the cause of the disease!

 

IMO, All ceremonial healers make use of the power of suggestion to

affect the course of a patients disturbed condition back to

" normalcy " ; The applied techniques may be different but all these

systems require that both the Healer and the Patient share a common

paradigm of what's is possible!

 

Please understand that I am not not knocking down cupping as a valid TCM

technique, quite the opposite! The cardinal point I am trying to

communicate, as a possible explanation for, is that in a properly

functioning human being there is a hierarchy in the energetic alignment

of the body where by Blood follows Chi, which in turn is led by Shen

and that this axiom is the basis for what in the West is known as " the

placebo effect " or the Psychosomatic component of disease! Many methods

of modulating the flow of chi (qi, prana, bio-potential, etc) exist and

some like in Qigong only require the correct alignment of the

relationship between body, mind and the Universe!

 

Domingo

 

victoria_dragon wrote:

>

> This too is from the Shanghai College Comprehensive Text:

>

> " Cups need only be retained in place from 5-15 minutes, depending on

> the strength of suction. Especially in hot weather, or when cupping

> over shallow flesh, the duration of treament should not be too long. "

> (p. 445.)

>

>

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Chinese Traditional Medicine , Domingo Pichardo

<dpichardo3 wrote:

>

> Well, this is very interesting and important for proper application

of

> cupping, but I still don't get a clear picture from the quoted text

of

> the actual mechanism by which this is suppose to work within the

content

> of TCM!

 

I don't either. That's one of the weaknesses of the text. I want to

understand why creating congestion and localized Blood Stasis would

help certain things so I can better predict when cupping is going to

help and when it would hurt. The only possible explanation that I can

think of is that all that blood drawn to one area would bathe the

area in a lot of " nourishment " and " moisture " . It also could have

the effect of drawing something away from other areas. But these are

just guesses on my part.

 

To be fair, the original Shanghai College text is four volumes. The

four were condensed into 1 book for English speakers. The explanation

could very well be in the original 4-volume set in Chinese.

 

Another criticism I have of the English text is that it veers too

much toward cookbook acupuncture. There are sections where common

acupoints are given for certain Western-defined medical conditions.

The problem is that these don't begin to cover the different TCM

Roots that can underlie the same Western-defined medical condition.

Again, these may be present in the original but not in the condensed

version. The translators and editors may have pared the info down to

the most probable and most often encountered. If so, this is a

disservice to Western readers. In my opionion, differential diagnoses

and recommended points should have been put into a separate volume

and covered adequately. I find Giovanni Maciocia in both his

Foundations and Practice books a lot more helpful in selecting

acupoints than this text is. In Foundations, he presents the

material strictly in a framework of TCM diagnoses. In The Practice

of , even though the chapter headings are Western-

defined Medical conditions, he's careful to go into the different

possible TCM Roots in some detail and present recommended acupoints

and herbs within the TCM framework. He explains what each of the

points does in a TCM context.

 

The most detailed books tend to be those that concentrate on a

particular group of disorders. Like TCM hematology, urinary system

problems, etc.

 

> It sounds more like its roots came from the very ancient

> shamanic idea of " drawing out " the " evil spirit " that has invaded

the

> body and is the cause of the disease!

 

Actually anything even remotely smacking of superstition or the

spiritual was purged from TCM in China decades ago. Anything that is

still being used works in the practical world or it wouldn't still be

used. Even the use of animal horns for cupping in ancient times had

a very practical use. It's a great way to get pus out of a sore in a

way that turns out is the least likely to spread infection. Cloth or

animal skins were in short supply or non-existent in the earliest

times in the case of cloth. Even dirty ones. When a sore or a boil

or infected area is lanced, sometimes the pus and other material can

shoot for several feet and splatter anyone and anything in the

vacinity. The use of a horn for cupping would cut down quite a bit on

the splatter problem. Plus a horn would be easier to clean and even

disinfect than cloth or skins are. It could be stuck in the fire for

a little while. The ancients didn't know about germs, but that

doesn't mean that they didn't observe that certain practices were

less likely to worsen or spread sickness than others were.

 

A lot is made of ancient people's supposed " superstition " , but they

didn't do anything that didn't somehow improve life and the

possibility of survival. Some of their explanations may sound

superstitious to us today, but what they did had some very practical

results that increased the chances of survival. They couldn't afford

the luxury of anything that wasn't practical.

 

> IMO, All ceremonial healers make use of the power of suggestion to

> affect the course of a patients disturbed condition back to

> " normalcy " ; The applied techniques may be different but all these

> systems require that both the Healer and the Patient share a common

> paradigm of what's is possible!

 

This doesn't explain why acupuncture works on dogs and cats. Or why

it works on humans who don't share the healer's paradigm and may even

consider it nonsense. What went a long way in the West beginning to

consider TCM as valid was Westerners who required emergency treatment

while in China and the treatment they would have gotten in the West

simply was not available or was only available within a TCM framework.

 

From what I've observed, the people who are susceptible to a placebo

effect are people who suffer from hysteria. Most of the population

is not susceptible to it. The over-reliance on the placebo effect for

an explanation actually gets in the way of learning more about

healing. There is usually a physical world explanation and reason for

improvement, but the placebo explanation gets in the way of

recognizing it. For example, when people are enrolled in a medical

test, what sometimes happens is that because someone is taking an

interest in their health, they start to take more of an interest in

their health. They may change their diet, start walking daily, get

more rest, etc. All things that they don't tell the reserachers about

because they don't think the researchers would care, and all too

often they don't. The ones on the placebo improve not because of a

placebo effect but because of something else they have started doing.

What's scary is that some of the people on the actual test drug

improve not because of the drug but because of other things they

start doing. This can lead researchers to think the drug is more

effective than it is.

 

All too often arrogance among Western researchers - as well as the

profit motive as well as ignorance - can result in some very

poor " science " in the West. A good example is a test several years to

determine the effectiveness of a new drug on I believe

arterioschlerosis. (It's been a few years since I read the details

of the study.) They used magnesium solution as the carrier for the

drug and for the placebo because Mg shots sting, and it would be hard

if not impossible to detect which was which. The thing is Mg

deficiency plays a role in a tendency toward developing

arterioschlerosis. At least some of the people who improved while on

the placebo improved not because of a placebo effect but because they

got more Mg than they usually did. At least some of the people who

improved while on the drug improved not because of the drug but

because they were getting more Mg than they usually did. When I read

the way that study was conducted, I wondered if any of the people who

designed the study knew that Mg deficiency can play a role in the

development of arterioschlerosis. Did they know and just discounted

the info out of arrogance (the erroneous belief that nothing can work

as well as a drug), or did they deliberately chose a Mg solution to

muddy the results of the study and make the drug look more effective

than it was?