A revolutionary approach to diagnostic and therapeutic cupping
Diagnosis with cupping glasses is a significant scientific breakthrough in which cupping cups were used, for the first time in the history of this very ancient science, for diagnostic purposes. This came after an extensive scientific study that lasted for four years, and was presented for the first time in the Turkish capital, Istanbul, at the Second Conference on Alternative Medicine, organized by the British Cupping Society in September 2012. The study was conducted on five hundred patients during the period 2008 to 2012 and proved the accuracy of diagnosis with cupping glasses to be about 94% compared with modern diagnostic devices such as MRI, CT scans, and X-rays.
It was also the first time that the placement of cupping glasses was changed to be directly on the spinal column, whereas this had always been prohibited among cupping practitioners worldwide ever since cupping was known. Previously, the cups were only placed on the sides of the spine without any clear scientific reasons for this prohibition.
It is known that the nervous system is the main controller of the organs and functions of the human body, and it is considered the main source of producing and distributing the electricity necessary for the functioning of the body's various organs. The nervous system consists of the central nervous system, which is the brain, and the peripheral nervous system, which consists of the spinal cord and peripheral nerves. The brain is the main source of control over the functioning of the organs.
The source of nervous supply in the human body is the spinal column, which is divided into three main stations: the cervical station, the thoracic station, and the sacral station. From these areas, electrical connections emerge to supply the body with the electricity required for its functioning in a wondrous and well-coordinated divine harmony. For example, the cervical station controls the work of the brain, which in turn transmits signals and instructions for the functioning of various organs such as the heart, lungs, stomach, esophagus, ear, eye, nose, and so on. The brain conveys these instructions through the cervical station to reach all these organs to regulate the voluntary and involuntary muscle movements controlling the contractions of these organs, their filling and emptying, the functioning of different glands, the secretion of hormones and fluids, and mainly controls the blood flow to these organs through the neural control of the vascular network of arteries carrying fresh blood to the organs and veins carrying old blood back.
Our new scientific theory states that the human body is a complex electrical device, and any disturbances in the functioning of different organs, including the brain, occur when there is an electrical malfunction originating from the spinal column stations (the three stations), or in the transmission of signals from the brain to the body, primarily through the cervical station, which represents the most important of the three stations. This malfunction resembles an electrical short circuit in an electrical circuit, which must be disconnected or fixed for the electricity to continue functioning properly. The short circuit in the human body results in different symptoms such as pain, numbness, muscle weakness, difficulty or inability to move, and also disturbances in the blood circulation of all body organs, where pure blood cannot reach the organs in the required amount for their proper functioning, nor can deoxygenated blood return from the tissues to the heart for purification and redistribution as oxygenated blood needed by the organs for healthy functioning.
The nervous connections spread throughout the human body are always accompanied by arterial and venous connections so that they exist as one unit: nerve–artery–vein, clustered together in specific points of the body. The nerves are the main controllers of the dilation or constriction of the blood vessels, and thus the main controllers of the amount of blood within these vessels and its flow speed. When there is increased external pressure on these nerves for any reason, nervous supply weakens, and the transmission of electrical signals (the electrical current) through these nerves weakens as well, leading to a weakened vascular network in both its arterial and venous parts.
The reasons that can cause direct pressure on the nerves are mostly from the muscular mass surrounding the nerve from the outside, as in muscle spasms, or from fluid leakage from the bloodstream and its accumulation around the nerves like a clamp, weakening their electrical transmission. There are also cases of herniated discs or bony protrusions, which increase the pressure inside the spinal column. The spinal column normally has a stable pressure that allows the smooth passage of nerve signals from the brain to the rest of the body. The increase of pressure inside this neural tube adds pressure on the nerves, thereby weakening the passage of electrical current through them.
The symptoms resulting from nerve compression (the electrical short circuit) and the reduced flow of nerve signals as a body reaction are many. They include, for example: pain, numbness, muscle weakness, difficulty or inability to move, loss of balance, swelling of the legs, weakness of visceral functions such as those of the stomach, colon, pancreas, ovaries, uterus, bladder, and prostate, which causes functional disorders in these organs.
The electrical short circuit in the cervical area is extremely dangerous, as it leads to reduced blood supply to the brain, which represents about 3% of the body weight but receives about 15–20% of the blood pumped from the heart with every beat at a rate of 750 ml per minute, carrying about 20% of the body's oxygen and glucose.
This deficiency in cerebral blood supply leads to malfunctions in brain functions such as sleep, balance of movement, thinking, focus, various types of memory, and the senses of hearing, vision, smell, and taste, as well as thought disturbances leading to psychological symptoms such as obsessive thoughts and hallucinations. As for the weakened electricity transmitted from the brain to the body due to compression of the cervical nerves, this may lead to strokes, heart attacks, and sudden cardiac arrest. It is often noted that these events are linked to sleep, either during or immediately after it. It is commonly heard: "He had no complaints, he just ate dinner and went to bed, and when we tried to wake him up, he had passed away." Rarely do we hear: "He collapsed dead while walking." This is because pressure occurs on the neck muscles during sleep, preventing the transmission of the brain's electrical commands necessary for the heart muscle to function, causing it to stop.
The way cupping works in general—and cupping by our modern scientific method in particular—is that it works by displacing the volume of fluid accumulated around the cervical muscles and the nerves spread in the human body as well as around the spinal cord and canal. This reduces the pressure on them, thereby improving the speed of nerve signal transmission and enhancing the performance of different body organs, especially the brain. The displacement of fluid by the laws of physics always creates a vacuum, which the spinal canal needs in order to function properly due to the narrowing that always occurs with disc diseases and spinal canal stenosis.
Diagnostic cupping relies on creating negative pressure on the spinal column at the different stations in a studied sequence until we restore the missing healthy electrical circuit. The cups are placed and suction applied from one point to another while monitoring the patient's complaint. For example, if a patient complains of chronic knee pain, we place the cups moving from station to station until the knee pain or other complaint decreases or disappears. The area where the cupping glass was applied and relieved or removed the pain is considered the source of the electrical short circuit and must then continue to receive treatment by displacing the fluid to the skin surface in the case of dry cupping, where it is disposed of through the skin and bloodstream, or outside the body through wet cupping. The point that helped restore the electrical circuit is called the "positive diagnostic point." It is preferable to look for more than one positive point to achieve the best results, and these differ from patient to patient.
One of the main properties that often saves the body in health and disease is the property of adaptation or acclimatization, which is a group of different processes managed by the brain with high regulation to rescue the body from imminent danger, as in cases of acute arterial bleeding, directing blood to more vital organs like the brain at the expense of less vital ones like the skin.
In cases of herniated discs, chronic nerve compression, and reduced nerve signal flow—which are always accompanied by reduced blood supply to organs and reduced return of venous blood to the heart for purification—the body's organs do not have a proper environment to function optimally. In such cases, the body adapts to the new situation by consuming less arterial blood than normal, meaning less oxygen and nutrients, leading to reduced organ function. For example, the stomach and intestines may not move as required, causing indigestion, or glands may secrete less than normal, affecting their function and resulting in many diseases. As for venous blood pooling and difficulty returning it to the heart for purification, this causes pressure on stagnant tissues, adding extra pressure on nerves, which further weakens veins, thus creating a vicious cycle. Cupping, both dry and wet, works on reducing tissue pressure and releasing nerves so that nerve signal flow returns to its proper state. This also requires the body to undergo a different kind of adaptation than the first. Here, the body adapts to the natural functioning that it had lost for a long time and returns to proper functioning, whereas in the first case, it adapts to an abnormal state until a solution is found.
Thus, cupping as a process takes only minutes, more or less depending on the patient, but adaptation requires a longer time to appear. Therefore, we need more time to feel the benefits of cupping, and not as is commonly thought that improvement is felt immediately or within a day or two, after which a patient may say: "I didn't benefit from cupping." That is to say, cupping is adaptation of the body, and adaptation requires time, just like agricultural projects: we irrigate but wait for the crop. Cupping also, by the laws of geology, occurs at different depths from the body surface down to the nerves, and by the laws of physics it removes a certain volume of fluid creating a vacuum. Thus, removing a few millimeters of fluid is not the same as removing multiple millimeters. Therefore, the effect of cupping depends on time for adaptation, and on its repetition and continuation to reach deeper nerves, just like drilling wells in nature to reach potable groundwater, and like gold prospecting in nature: when the detector signals the presence of a gold mass in a certain area, it does not mean we obtained it; when we start digging, it does not mean we obtained it; we must continue in the direction to the deeper point to obtain it. Each cupping session brings us closer to the gold.
All of this change in the placement of cupping, its use for diagnostic purposes, and the new explanation of how it works constituted a real revolution in the history of cupping. It provided a new interpretation for many diseases, and gave new hope to patients for whom modern medicine has not offered full or partial solutions to their health problems, such as multiple sclerosis, strokes, frozen shoulder, and repeated cruciate ligament tears in sports injuries. This change in placement and interpretation of cupping by the new method was necessary, since many concepts of cupping and its mechanism had not changed since it was first known, even though the human body has evolved in form and substance over the ages. Cupping matched that earlier era, while the revolution of cupping matches this era.
Here, it is also necessary to talk about the need for cupping to keep pace with the changes that occurred in the human body after the Corona pandemic in order to keep pace with treatment, as diseases have increased, their manifestations diversified, and the age groups affected by each disease have changed. Linking cupping with the development of the human body and discussing new nervous connections in the human body gave new hope for treatment, enriched the long-stagnant scientific research, and will undoubtedly reflect on human health, encouraging the activation of advanced thinking for disease prevention programs under the principle: prevention is better than cure.
Diagnostic cupping also reveals previously undocumented neural connections, especially between the upper and lower parts of the body. For example, a cervical herniated disc can cause pain in the knee or ankle. Symptoms from the upper and lower body are interconnected, disproving the assumption that the right hemisphere controls only the left side. Compression on the right side of the neck can manifest as pain in the right arm and left leg simultaneously.
Patients who choose diagnostic cupping therapy respond to specialized questions developed through twenty years of accumulated experience in Africa, Asia, and Europe. These questions assess a patient's sensations in various positions and during daily activities, providing high diagnostic value and guiding treatment beyond conventional tools.
Our research laid the foundation for restoring alternative medicine to its deserved place, providing solutions in some cases where modern medicine proves insufficient, and offering hope for disease prevention through advanced thinking and proactive health care.