Hey, everybody is Doctor Jo. And today I'm going to show you how to use cupping therapy
for pain relief. So let's get started.
So the folks that Achedaway sent me their Achedaway Cupper to help demo cupping,
but I'm going to talk about that a little bit more later. And just tell you, in general, what cupping
therapy is, you might have seen in the past five to 10 years, a lot of cupping in the Olympics.
Some of those big swimmers, you see these big circle kind of bruises, a lot of times around
the shoulders, it can be for the legs, it can be for the back and the neck. And so cupping is
really just and Chinese medicine therapy, ancient Chinese medicine therapy that goes back to even
3000 years, and it's been used all over the world. So what you're doing is you're putting a cup on
your skin, and getting a suction to draw in that skin. And so ideally, what that does, is it helps
improve circulation to the area. And so that helps with pain relief, it helps with inflammation,
and just for general well being because it's improving that circulation in your body.
The big thing about cupping is, as you might have seen, either you know with famous people
or the Olympics, that cupping does leave marks it's basically bringing a bruise to your skin.
It's bringing that blood to the surface. And how that works is when that suction happens,
it puts a lot of pressure on our capillaries, you know, in in the that moves, the blood
around in our skin. And so when that pulls up those capillaries and puts that extreme
pressure on them, those capillaries break and then pulls the blood to the surface. So
if you're interested in trying this, first of all, make sure you're cleared by your
doctor or healthcare provider to do it. And I'd recommend having it done by a healthcare provider
first, but you're gonna get bruising. So I want to show you real quick, I did one earlier today.
And you can see this isn't even a big one, because I don't have a whole lot of issues here.
A lot of times with cupping, the more injury you have, you'll have a bigger bruising to that area.
So sometimes you might do it on an area and not get a whole lot of bruising. But you know,
if you're getting ready to go to a wedding or some fancy party, you might not want to do that
cupping on an area that's exposed. So let me talk a little bit about the Achedaway Cupper because
it's a really neat concept. With cupping in general, you again, I would always recommend
having it done to you first by a professional, but this actually makes it super easy to do
without a whole lot of training. And the reason for that is it's an automated cupper,
it actually does all the suction. A lot of times with cupping that you'll see in you know,
physical therapy clinics or with an acupuncture as they might use heat to draw on the suction,
they might use like a mechanical pump to draw in the suction. Some of them like for home use,
you can just kind of suck the air out of it as well. But what this does is it does the suction
for you. And the reason I like that is because a lot of times if you're doing it yourself,
you might not know how much suction to do, you can do a little bit you can do a medium amount,
you can do a lot and a lot of times it depends on your injury. So this has five different modes that
you can use and five different intensities that you can use. So you can start off really light
and kind of get a feel for it. And it does it for you. So then you know you're not doing too
much. And then if you feel okay, yeah, can do a little bit more than you can start increasing
it from there. It also has three different sizes, the one I have on there, a medium one,
and then a smaller one for maybe like the neck shoulder area, or thinner surfaces that maybe
don't have quite as much meat on them. They also have a little spot here and a lanyard that you can
put on it. I do recommend using this especially if you have it on the upper area, or if your area
on space where it might fall down. Because if it loses suction, it could possibly actually fall. So
when it has a suction on it, it has great suction. You can even do some exercises with it sometimes.
But just for safety, make sure you're doing that. So you don't want to put it on areas where there's
like arteries where you can feel a pulse or things like that. You don't want to do it on areas where
there's fractures. If you have edema issues, you don't want to do that. There's some other
precautions maybe if you're on blood thinners or have a autoimmune issue, that's a blood issue.
Make sure you're checking again with your health care provider before trying this because it is
moving that blood and breaking those capillaries. So I'm going to show you this is so cool. This is
how easy it is. You just put it on the area that you want to do. You press the on button and you've
got to hold down just a little bit and then it starts. Make sure you push down a little bit to
get it started. But see then it's got that suction and stays on there. It has a mode button here. It
has the intensity here. And it also has infrared light to help with the healing process as well.
So it's got that extra bonus of some other form of treatment that you can do with it, which is a nice
added bonus to the traditional cupping. So as you can see here, it's pulling up that skin into the
area. And so it's nice because I'm not having to worry about this, I can leave it on and just let
it go. Whereas traditional cupping, you might have to change the intensity, change the pressure, put
some more suction in there as you go along. But the reason that it's nice because it's suction and
then releases, it helps increase that flow better again, then it's just being static on there. You
can also change the modes as you go. So I'm going to take it all the way up to the power mode. And
so the power mode in the professional modes, as you can see, holds it for a little bit longer. And
so it gets that more suction in there. But what I want to show real quickly, what's nice is, let's
say I'm working on my quad muscle here, I can also maybe do some quad sets working on that muscle
while I'm doing the suction, there and that cupping therapy, and it's got that nice suction
to be able to hold it in place. So I don't have to worry about it falling off in some of
the cupping devices you might get especially for home use there, you just kind of squeeze and put
them on there. And if you're doing trying to do an exercise or something with it, or even like a leg
lift, it might not hold this section very well. But I when I've been working with my hip and
stuff like that, the suction stayed on there the whole time. So I'm going to go ahead and stop
this one now. So you just press the button and you can feel that suction stop. If you want to
take it off a little bit quicker before the suction gets off, just make a little break in
that seal. And then you can take it off. And so you can see I'm already starting to get a
little bruise forming there, maybe not quite as much as some others. But it really does
kind of get worse before it gets better. So you'll get more bruising throughout the next couple days.
And they usually last for anywhere from five to probably maybe even 10 days depending on how much
blood you've brought to the surface there. So a lot of times, especially in therapy,
what we'll do with the cupping is use it to break up adhesions. So if you want to get that suction
and then maybe move the cup around a little bit, you can use some creams and lotions, some people
like to use essential oils, again, just make sure you're reading the directions how to do it,
the Achedaway has some directions in there making sure that it's a nice smooth,
there's not just clumps of lotion, and then you can actually take it and move it around a little
bit to break up those adhesions, or people call scar tissue sometimes which will cause tightness,
or caused binding down in the muscles. And so that's a great way to help break it up. I've used
that several times as a technique. And it works really well. It also has an app to go with it,
which is nice because if you want the app, you can kind of control it from there. But what's great
is you can also control it all off from here as well. So if you don't want to use the app,
you don't have to. And it does automatically turn off. So then, you know again, how much
how long to use it. But I would suggest that if you have not had cupping before really start off
with a shorter amount of time like maybe even two to three minutes because as you can see,
I just did that for a little bit of time and it already started turning a little red and just a
little purple there. So I would start off with less and then gradually progress your way up
and then just let it automatically turn off after you've kind of built it up. If you're interested
in purchasing the Achedaway Cupper, make sure and click on the link up there. And don't forget to
subscribe by clicking down there. And remember, be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel better soon.