Chinese Pseudoscience #2: Cupping
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Shockingly, it was almost 3 weeks ago when I started this series by demonstrating how acupuncture is nothing but a cultural hang-up.
What was most interesting is that in my first post on the matter, I explored the history of acupuncture and how even traditionally, the Chinese mostly saw it as a bunk, silly superstition. It was only when Mao Zedong needed it for political purposes because there were too many people to provide real healthcare to, he pushed fake medicine to keep people quiet and working.
Even so, I got replies saying 'nope. It's real because I did it once and felt good! And everybody else does too!'
Well, this is an ongoing theme in this whole series so I'll try to avoid repetition in countering that retort. Another common theme you will hear from me is the very real effect of placebo.
Most of Chinese medicine is built on placebo (aside from the heavy doses of propaganda) and the fact that this actually does have positive effects in many ways is fine.
However, just because a treatment is seemingly benign with an unintentional placebo benefit, does not make it harmless, and this is something we will dig deeper into today, because this pseudoscience can leave some ugly marks on your body and society:
Cupping
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I've seen this phenomenon for years, having lived in Asia since 2010, and it instantly hit me as bizarre and stupid. It hit me again in 2016 when all those Olympic swimmers started doing it. Superstitious fools.
Essentially, cupping is where you put a cup on your body and create a vacuum between your skin and it. This can be done by suction or more traditionally, heating the cup up which would heat the air within.
This in turn pulls at the skin and brings the blood to the surface. Basically, you're giving yourself a bruise, multiple times all over your body. Then, if 'wet' cupping, a person slices your skin open and lets out the 'toxins' or 'bad blood'.
The belief - and it is precisely that, a belief - is that the qi (yes, that again) is disrupted, and by doing this, it re-establishes the equilibrium between body and qi or whatever. Interestingly, 'dry' cupping appears to be more popular, and it's not even clear what that's for. One source claims that dry cupping:
...causes organ blood absorption, organ warming, and loss of organ humidity
But doesn't state how that benefits anybody.
Basically, what it all boils down to is bloodletting, and similar versions of this superstitious crap can be found all over the world.
Bloodletting
This is a real daft idea, but it has survived for 2,000 years until recent times. In Europe, it was still around until the late 1800's! In fairness, bloodletting as a practice was probably the best thing people had at the time and it sounds kind of plausible enough when talking about balancing the body, and even more so when you think of things like 'lowering blood pressure'; hypertension.
But just because the Romans and Egyptians and Chinese thought something was cool thousands of years ago, doesn't make it so.
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In fact, it may be the case that more people have been killed by bloodletting than saved, including George Washington, who was drained of up to 7 pints of blood for a chest infection.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, the historical use of bloodletting was harmful to patients
It seems logical that if you have high blood pressure, letting some out would lower it, like opening a can of coke. But this is a misunderstanding of what hypertension is. It's not about having too much blood, it's actually far more complex and far less understood. There are cases of blood vessels narrowing, too much salt in the diet, high blood volume in the centre of the body and so on.
Donating blood does have a blood pressure-dropping effect, but small and temporary.
A comparison of 655 blood donors with 3,200 nondonors showed average blood pressure between the two groups was almost the same.
There are other very specific reasons to do professional bloodletting, or phlebotomy, for things like hemoglobin build up in higher altitudes leading to chronic mountain sickness, and polycythemia, which is a disease the creates too many red blood cells.
But what bloodletting isn't good for, is 'balancing you body' by creating brruises and slicing them a little, which is the crux of Cupping.
What does Cupping claim to fix?
Well, it's a bit like the God of the Gaps argument. Where things are largely subjective or unknown to science, God reigned supreme. But while science and medicine improves, God stays static, and so his position and responsibility continually taking smaller and smaller place in our world, left only with the things we cannot explain... until we can.
The same goes for cupping. By keeping its claims to subjective matters, like join, back, muscle pains, fatigue, depression, they can forever remain 'unfalsifiable' and thus 'valid'.
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Another form of this is keeping with what the culture deem acceptable. In the West, we are currently going through a 'detox' movement, where every health business is telling you your body is full of toxins and this product or that product can remove it, even though the human body is a fantastic, self-cleansing device.
In the East, Qi is still going strong, so instead, the focus is on that.
Whatever makes the most money, basically.
Research
As I mentioned previously with acupuncture, there is extensive research on the matter; out of 3,000 studies, none have been able to confirm the benefits of acupuncture, and it has led to much frustration that there is even a need to waste money on such things, and a demand for it to stop, 3,000 papers later. But then again, all papers from China come up 100% positive, so that likely statistical phenomenon keeps the studies coming.
The same can be said for Cupping. So let's see if there's any ground for validity. The first thing I came across before I even started writing this, was from NCBI. Generally fairly reputable, I was disappointed to find a rather 'safe', tiny post that informs you of the Iranian practice of cupping, Hijama, and concludes with this:
Dry cupping and wet cupping can be introduced as the complementary treatment methods beside other treatment methods.
This is almost as if to say 'I don't want to say what I think, at risk of being professionally castrated'. It neither confirms nor denies the relevance of cupping. This, I suppose, is unsurprising given that it comes from the 'Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences'.
But let's dig deeper.
False positive results
A false positive is simply a result that says something is positive, when really it isn't. This is typically found in small, biased studies. An ongoing theme I've noticed when looking at these trials is that any positive results appear to indeed be small groups, typically headed by somebody called 'Jiang' or some Iranian name. Another theme I find with these studies is along the lines of this:
Lack of a sham therapeutic arm may be the most important limitation of this study.
The limitation of generalizability of the results to children with non-functional constipation is another considerable point
These come from a study looking at 'functional constipation' in children.
None of the 16 included trials blinded participants or practitioners, most likely resulting in performance bias.
However, due to the fact that only trials with small sample sizes were available and that there were potential risks of bias (based on methodological quality assessment) within the included studies, combination of cupping therapy and other treatments compared with other treatments alone showed “low” evidence of benefit.
...one half of the included trials were retrieved from the Chinese literature, which may have introduced potential selection bias
Due to the limited number of included trials, subgroup analysis could not be conducted for further assessment. (explaining the issue that those being studied were suffering different ailments)
These are from studies based on pain relief via cupping.
Of the 135 RCTs included in this review, 84.44% were high risk of bias.
...there is high potential that our review may have publication bias.
These are from a study on the therapeutic effects of cupping.
Do you see the theme? I had a bunch more tabs open but I gotta go out to dinner in 28 minutes.
So it seems there's an ongoing issue that all the studies showing positive results have critical flaws in their design, leading to false positives all over the shop, whereby larger and higher quality studies tend to come out negative.
But of course, the media doesn't care about THAT.
Is it harmful?
I'd argue yes. Totally. When I was in Korea, a friend asked me to try some traditional Korean thing and I was like 'sure whatever'. So she put this thing on my hand and lit it. I felt a bit of a burn as it happened and when she took it off, a big red mark was on my hand.
The next day, that turned into a giant, pus-filled blister and following that, a much larger red area. Following that, a scar. One that still sits there today 6 years later.
My point is, the likelihood of things going wrong seems to be quite high. Last year, a man was left with SEVEN, disgusting black holes in his back, and a fever, after trying to treat shoulder pain. Sorry but the picture has to be posted!
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In other, less extreme cases, psoriasis was spread around their body - a disease of the skin that leaves red, scaly patches. furthermore, infection is not uncommon, and bruises are, well, guaranteed. Burns are also highly common.
Wet cupping can be even worse, causing anemia if slicing the skin open is done excessively.
Generally, it's not going to be life threatening, but by taking part, you risk scarring your body for life for what is, evidently, a pseudoscience.
Stick to what works; Pain medicine, laxatives, a glass of water and a good rest. You'll be fine.
And no, it doesn't help you swim faster in the Olympics.
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Image Sources:
| Olympic Cupping
Sources:
| Harmful bloodletting | Hijama | Constipation | Pain relief | Therapy review
do you like it?
do you read chinese?
huh?
This is a very bold statement. How are you backing up classifying an entire practice to be pseudo Science? It's like saying bitcoin is a pyramid scheme. It clearly shows a lack of understanding by uttering the very statement.
It's "most of", not "all of", so not all Chinese medicine has been claimed to be anything.
Alright, if you are defending yourself by saying most not all, then "most" implies majority. How was majority determined?
Rather than just say bs, can you provide counter evidence? Please check my 'history' post showing how the very roots of TCM is bunk
I went through your post and looked through what you wrote. You have one post that connects politics to acupuncture. in this post link.
And then you provide your own research into into the effectiveness of acupuncture link
I have personally tried acupuncture for muscular pain and for more advanced ailments. In both cases, it did not work. And I'll explain why your research into this is not complete.
The vast majority of TCM did not evolve around acupuncture, I'm sure you are aware of this. It is just one aspect a very vast field of medicine. With that said, TCM is holistic, and it approaches the body in a lifestyle way. It is not meant to treat cancer, tumors herniated disc, a heart attack and so on. You claim that your research states that TCM claims this. TCM does not claim this. People trying to make a quick buck by claiming they can heal you however, do.
It is instead meant to explain why your body is not optimal to fight off certain ailments as a result of being sub optimal.
For example:
Your body begins to fever as a means to raise the temperature of the core. This raised temperature is meant to produce an environment that is not hospitable to foreign bacteria/viruses. It is also partly a result of increased cellular activity.
In western medicine, you would target it with fever reducers, of which there are many. Why perform this action if fever is a natural response? One reason would be if you have an infection of an open wound in your leg and the fever will literally kill you.
TCM is not applicable in this situation because TCM is meant to optimize your body for self healing. There are also thousands of herbs used in TCM that are sources for modern medicine.
Where TCM does apply, is if you nerve issue from sitting down all day. And the nerve block is causing you to have random spasms in your right shoulder, which is pulling on your scalenes causing inflammation of the muscle. The local inflammation is causing you to have sore throat symptoms and you start feeling like you have an onset of a fever because your neck contains lymphatic nodes that are being triggered.
There are thousands of scams in china touting TCM works for everything under the moon, and this is an outrageous claim that ignores what TCM was originally about.
My source: I have hundreds of textbooks for TCM that dating back 100 years. With writings within the book dating back over 200 years in a dry vault. I've been a "victim" of TCM and western medicine. There are times with one is appropriate and the other is not.
you got a full vote for that.
You've opened up a very large area of debate that warrants at least one post on its own, which I think would be best in this case. All I can really suggest for the sake of comments if you wish to continue is provide me with some kind of scientific evidence, rather than anecdotal or promises, that TCM is effective beyond placebo.
To be clear, I didn't say all, so of course I'm aware, for example, of TuYouYou's achievements, and I know that, purely through trial and error, superstition and so on that various herbs and such have been found to have some positive effects.
But, when it comes to the crux of the belief, the QI, the meridian pathways, the five elements, and so forth, it's just as bunk as any other scam out there.
Being right sometimes does not make a trustworthy science. It has to go through the correct, rigorous process, and that's where TCM unavoidably fails.
To be creative and demonstrate:
A doctor comes to me with a knife and says:
And then when he does it, it turns out there was a worm under my skin that was releasing headache-inducing chemicals, so the knife stab successfully cured a headache.
From that day on, people know that there is a headache worm that can be stabbed with a knife all thanks to Traditional Knife Medicine, which goes on to make a chart of where Blorg points are, which happen to be locations where the worm likes to breed. So this is evidently scientifically legitimate form of medicine, Right?
Sorry, that's now how it works... except with TCM. For some reason that gets a pass to slip past the scientific process.
Anyway perhaps my 'most is placebo' statement isn't entirely accurate - but perhaps it is, I haven't run the numbers but I think i'll make a post on that very thing. But the bigger issue here is that the very premise of TCM is bunk, and regardless of how many individual occurrences actually have a positive effect, it's not because of TCM, it's because of chance encounters and circumstantial happenings over thousands of years of trial and error through blind superstition. Mostly error. And I want no part of that, and the world could very well do without it, too.
Maybe I am being unreasonable in trying to convince you otherwise. For me to actually to be able to convince you would require such a tremendous amount of work for something to which there is no fruit other than to say "HA I told you so!?" something I don't care about.
All of the studies that are out there address the most outlandish claims of TCM, of which there are many and none of which I am denying.
How much study have you put into TCM to fully understand it? or do you dismiss it to the point where its not worth your time to learn?
I'm being as open minded as I can here by asking for evidence that simply passes the requirements that all other medical research has to go through. If that doesn't exist, then of course I'm going to dismiss it. If it does exist, it shouldn't be too hard to show it to me, I'd even add it in a follow up post. A safe medical alternative to heavy drugs is only a good thing!
I'm not defending myself, I'm defending him :)
Majority is usually more than half but not all.
Am I takin this out of context that are you telling me is that you want to make a bold statement, and then claim you researched it, and then say you didn't actually look at everything?
It means all I have currently written about on steemit are those two things, because I've only started the series recently. But I've lived in China for 4 years, Asia for 8, and I've had more than enough time to become well acquainted with the nonsense plaguing the continent.
Of course, when it comes to actually writing these things I learn a lot as I go - I'm not a real scientist - and though I do start off looking for positive outcomes to see how legit they are, I'd be happy for people in the comments to provide these things so I can follow up with better info in the next posts, but so far nobody seems to want to do that, and just tell me 'no, it works'
I'm sorry to say so, but in the past people in Greece used cupping to cure a cold, I think my late grandmother would perform the technique too.
I prefer more scientifically accepted methods though (in other words: give me those drugs!)
Cupping is surprisingly global from what I was reading, since bloodletting in general has thrived for millenia, but I didn't look into it enough to see if it spread from China or kind of evolved separately... Guess I should find out!
Cheap methods that substitute medicine always spread. Well, you can make another part and some more history digging...
Hello @mobbs
By this article, you have done a great justice on the confusion surrounding acupuncture as an alternative medicine. And the fact that myriads if positive results keep coming from China is suggestive of adoption of flawed scientific approach which it's result may have been predetermined.
Thanks. And keep up the good work.
@eurogee for @euronation
Yeah the bias in China is super high, statistically Acupuncture is 100% effective in China lol. That's a statistic impossibility! Ahhh well. Thanks for reading!
woooooow.... very exciting, I am reading all of detailed. Sorry @mobb I just citations your paragraph "And then when he does it, it turns out there was a worm under my skin that was releasing headache-inducing chemicals". Is that true... ? where they came from?
That was just a silly example, I made it up of course!
Well researched write up though I would have loved to see practical/laboratory evidences against these pseudoscience treatments. Hijama (wet cupping) is fairly common here in Nigeria as well. Especially among the Muslims. I am sure the act was imported into the country from one of those middle eastern or Asian countries. There is need to see beyond the placebo effects and investigate in the laboratory
Well my acupuncture one covered direct evidence and I didn't want to repeat, that being said, that was in two parts so this could be too! I'll look into it when I get home
Great info. I always had a doubt, but your post took away all that. Putting needles in ones body that can take away pain on the other side of the body sounds a bit far-fetched and those bogus cups, never heard of... Thanks!
Cupping became super famous last year but yeah it's mostly found in Asia. Good thing, too!
Cupping is also popular in Greek traditional medicine. Everybody here has an aunt or something that is an expert on cupping.and of course it cures everything!
The popularity of cupping is a fine testament to the quality of the nation!
(Then again, the UK government funds Homeopathy so... yeah)
This is scared me a little but I agree with you at some points even the fact that some people got "cured"because they believed in it, since sometimes people feel better do to external reason or the better diet they tell you to follow, in fact my friend told me that I needed natural Chinese treatment since it had helped her if thyroid, the doctor also told her to follow a diet and keep a better daily routine like walking daily...
So it makes me wonder if that was that cured her, she has spent a lot of money in it and even more than what her hospital medication and treatment she had to follow before, thou she was not keeping herself in shape and following any diet before, in one sense the natural doctor did help her, change her life style tho I am not sure about all the "natural treatment and salt water she is taking" is it really worth it.
I am really afraid of needles so I have never done it, I don't think I will even if it works, and thanks for your info, I am never going to do it since not only the marks and pain will remain but also what if having a sickness we really need the medical treatment we fall ill and get worst.
Yeah I mean, at the end of the day just take a painkiller lol.
In the unlikely event that established medicine either doesn't work or has severe side effects, the placebo of acupuncture might help a little but so might the placebo of a hammer to the face, I dunno!
Glad your friend is doing well though! Thanks for reading =)
Dear @mobbs, please cite at least one of those 3000 research papers that you have read to write this article.
Several of them are mentioned in my acupuncture posts you can view on my page, may a little way down
yeah, that's not the most scientific way to write a post like this and then tell me to go look for the references ;)
huh? The 3,000 studies were on acupuncture. I took the time to write about acupuncture, this is not a post about acupuncture. If it's too exhausting for you to scroll a little down my page, then here let me help you out:
Part 1 about the false history of acupuncture
Part 2, the research
Thank you. I don't have the time to scroll down your page unfortunately or many others at the time. The post is indeed about cupping, but the way you start presenting the reasearch, by mentioning 3000 papers on acupuncture, makes your findings about cupping sound stronger than they are. You cite one paper, with unclear findings. You are also presenting the whole thing as a placebo effect, but you don't seem to realize that there is also the nocebo effect.
I'd say from experience, that cupping has changed in the last 30 years. The cups themselves used to be much much smaller and you didn't leave them on for long. It isn't supposed to be done on your hand, or performed by a friend, just to try something out. It should be performed by a medical doctor for very specific things. It is indeed dangerous if done inappropriately or as a fad. Just FYI 😘
I didn't go through the same research-style post as last time precisely because I had done it before. It feels like repeating myself if I simply post one type of pseudoscience and then create a list of studies that show it's wrong. I've put the idea out there that there is plenty of evidence, now I want to explore different aspects of that, such as why positive research is wrong (in this post's case), and next about placebos, and maybe about blinded trials or whatever. Good to keep thngs fresh!
Cupping has changed and as stated, has some very specific places in medicine by chance, after real scientists looked into it. But in the same way, acupuncture is good for bursting spots on my back. It doesn't make it a relevant medicine. It just happens to use sharp needles.
Actually, acupuncture isn't only sharp needles, there is also another type where they use hot incense sticks to spot warm the acupuncture points.
But I digress , the reason why I wrote is, that the post loses it's validity, precisely because you don't feel like doing it in depth. You clearly aren't a real scientist to be writing this, or giving medical advice, which you do.
It's not the positive research which is bad per say, it's biased research.