Is 'Cupping' A Miracle Cure?

Forget Kabbalah bracelets and coconut water: every Hollywood star worth her salt knows that their health routine must include cupping. For those round marks on Aniston’s back are a tell-tale sign of cupping, an ancient Asian therapy where heated cups are placed onto the skin, creating suction that supposedly improves blood flow.

Dating back 5,000 years, the therapy is a form of acupuncture, and is based on the idea that suction from the cups draws the skin up and mobilises blood and energy around the body. Cupping enables the blood and energy to move again and travel to the area to begin the healing process. 

Although the resulting marks can look alarming, they are temporary, and this kind of cupping should not hurt in any way as the cups used are thick-rimmed and do not heat up. Other forms of cupping — which costs around £50 per session — involve using a sort of suction kit, so no flame is needed.

It was Dr Joshi who was responsible for Gwyneth Paltrow’s introduction to cupping , and other patients include Sadie Frost, Patsy Kensit and Ralph Fiennes. Cupping specialist Saud Hadi says: There are a number of cupping points on each side of the spine which correspond to organs. From the look of [Aniston], she’s had cupping in the right spots for fertility treatment. If the patient is in good health and has a good diet — like Aniston — then cupping fertility treatment can work within about five days. ‘I do a lot of fertility treatment and cupping wouldn’t be my first port of call,’ Mr Stones says. The location of the cupping marks on Jennifer Aniston would indicate some kind of musculoskeletal injury, such as back pain. 

In China, cupping is such an integral part of mainstream medicine that it is practised at hospitals for a variety of conditions. The country’s hugely successful Olympic swimming squad are regularly photographed with cupping marks, as it is thought to be helpful with muscular pain. 

A review of 135 studies on cupping therapy, published 2012 in the journal PLOS ONE, found that cupping may be effective on conditions such as acne, facial paralysis and herpes when combined with other treatments such as acupuncture. Despite cupping’s long history, the only controlled trial on this treatment showed no reduction in pain.

Edvard Ernst, a leading professor of complementary therapy added that the fact the skin appears to be sucked into the cup as if ‘by magic’ means cupping is likely to generate an ‘above-average placebo response’, says: ‘There is no good evidence that cupping helps any condition — except the dreaded condition of celebrities craving attention.’

What is Hijaamah (cupping)?

The word hijaamah (cupping) comes from the word hajm which means sucking, as in the phrase hajama al-sabiy thadya ummihi (the infant suckled his mother's breast). Al-Hajjaam means the cupper, hijaamah is the profession of cupping, and the word mihjam is used to describe the vessel in which the blood is collected and the lancet used by the cupper.

Cupping was known since ancient times. At first they used metal cups, from which they would remove the air by sucking it out after placing the cup on the skin. Then they used glass cups from which they would remove the air by burning a piece of cotton inside the cup. 

Al-Bukhaari narrated from Sa'eed Ibn Jubayr from Ibn 'Abbaas that the Prophet said: 'Healing is in three things: drinking honey, the incision of a cupper, and cauterizing with fire, but I forbid my Nation to use cauterizing.'

Cupping in Islam has real benefits in treating many diseases, past and present. The diseases which have been treated by cupping and for which it has been of benefit by Allaah's Leave include the following:

1.     Circulatory diseases.

2.    Treating blood pressure and infection of the heart muscle.

3.    Diseases of the chest and trachea.

4.    Pain in the neck and stomach, and rheumatic pain in the muscles.