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.
