How Cupping Therapy Cured My Migraines

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had some difficulty when it came to headaches. My body is very sensitive to extreme increase or decrease in sugar levels, dehydration, intense heat or extremely cold temperatures, or lack of sleep. These could all trigger my headaches. Back in my college days, I’d typically pop two advils and call it a day. It wasn’t until I got out of college and started taking birth control that I started getting intense migraines. Unilateral (one sided) in nature, migraines slowly started becoming a disturbance in my life. The same triggers started it but now the pain was extreme, only on my right temple area. I had extreme sensitivity to light and it was unbearable to even try to focus on anything else besides stopping the pain. What made things worse was that the Advil, my savior and grace during the hard headache days, didn’t even touch this kind of pain. I was recommended Extra Strength Excedrin (includes a mix of acetaminophen, aspirin and caffeine) and that finally did reduce the migraines once they were here, but I wanted to find a method to reduce the chances of the migraine popping up in the first place. In my journey to seek out the best method to reduce my pain I discovered cupping as an alternative therapy method which changed my approach on tackling migraines.

What Are Migraines And What Causes Them

Migraines are headaches that are subjectively more painful and usually consists of a cluster of symptoms including intense throbbing (typically unilateral) pain, nausea/vomiting, sensitivity to light, and possibly has an aura precede the attack which signals the migraine is coming on. Migraines are still not fully understood but for the most part it’s established that migraines occur due to a disruption in homeostasis. The hypothalmus is a portion of the brain which regulates and releases hormones, thermal regulation, thirst and hunger cravings, etc. Typically people who have migraines have an oversensitivity to environmental stressors such as not eating, weather, stress, neck pain, alcohol, etc. There’s a long list of different stressors and if you have chronic migraines you probably already know yours. It is best to get ahead of the migraines as they’re more difficult to treat once it’s kicked in.

Previous Ways I Tackled Migraines

As previously mentioned. Once the migraine’s here, even if I resolve what initially triggered the migraine (eating, sleeping, drinking water), the migraine won’t dissipate until I take medication to stop it. It’s studied that migraines can typically last anywhere from 4 hours to 72 hours. I’ve definitely had a migraine when I was super sick and developed the stiffest neck that lasted a week. For me, migraines are the type of annoying pains that make you want to curl up in a ball and resort back to when you were a child. My only chance of absolving myself from this extraordinary pain, I felt, was to take excedrin. The acetaminophen in Excedrin is effective in raising the pain threshold, therefore reducing pain. Aspirin stops the body’s production of prostaglandins (hormone increasing pain) in the peripheral nervous systems (nerves extending off the spinal cord to the rest of the body) while acetaminophen seems to tackle pain relief in the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). Caffeine is shown to heighten potency of acetaminophen and aspirin by up to 40%. Excedrin is effective in reducing the migraine significantly, but here are my issues with it:

• I am very sensitive to caffeine and feel anxious and very “air-headed” when I take it.
• Long-term use of aspirin is linked to stomach ulcers/gastrointestinal bleed as it does thin your blood, also making you more likely to bruise when on aspirin. Acetaminophen has been seen to cause liver injury with overuse.
• In general, I prefer to stay away from antibiotics and pharmaceuticals if it’s absolutely not necessary to take them. Because my migraines are so unbearable and don’t go away even if I try to resolve the trigger, its one area where I do find myself reaching for the pills.

An Alternative Way To Prevent Migraines

On my quest to find a more holistic treatment for migraines (and ignoring all the neurologists who told me I’d have to be on lifelong medications) I discovered cupping! If you’ve never heard of cupping you’ve atleast probably seen it. There was a time all the celebs were rocking the circular bruise marks throughout their backs and shoulders on the red carpets as a sign of their holistic elitism. Even when I treated patients for laser hair removal as a nurse, tons of them were branding this mysterious cupping bruise all throughout their backs. Not gonna lie, I was intrigued. Not even knowing if it would help with my migraines but hoping it would atleast help with my on and off back pain, I made an appointment at VIE Healing (a holistic center in West Hollywood) known for their cupping. I went into the office, checked in, drank some delicious aromatic herbal tea and was soon guided into my room. The practitioner spoke to me (and listened!) to my concerns. Never felt so listened to before by a practitioner. I explained my issues with my upper back and also went into depth with other issues I was experiencing like the migraines. “This helps for exactly that!” she told me. With my explanation of my back issues stemming from me always carrying my laptop in my backpack when I was younger, she was able to narrow down a huge part of migraine coming from my tense trapezius muscles.

Cupping Treatment

During the treatment, I laid on my stomach on the heated bed with my lower legs slightly propped up on a pillow. The treatment went as follows:

• The practitioner puts a flame inside a glass cup and removes it before placing it on the skin where the flames exhaustion of oxygen causes suctioning to the skin into the cup. (This is DRY cupping but with the oil placed on my skin first, it becomes the Running Method).
• She then does the same thing with several other cups, focusing on the “problem” area which mainly was my upper back and trapezius. She would glide and move the cups to the ideal position
• She’d step out for 3 minutes and come back to move the cups again with the whole treatment equaling about 20 minutes.
• After the treatment, I walked out with red, circular marks throughout the treatment area

Now in terms of pain, the treatment initially is startling as the suction goes on your skin. The anticipation is nerve racking but the treatment is not sensitive at all and at most mildly uncomfortable. After the treatment, I honestly remember wiping off drool from my mouth because I felt so relaxed. More than I’ve ever experienced in a treatment. My posture instantly improved and, its hard to explain, but I just felt light on my feet!

What Is Cupping And What Are The Benefits

Cupping is an ancient, holistic therapy that was used to treat several diseases. With its history going back to Egyptian and Chinese medical practices, cupping was used to treat conditions such as: loss of appetite, headaches, fainting, maldigestion, musculoskeletal diseases of the extremities and back, etc. There are also several kinds of cupping and different cups you can use (glass, metal or bamboo). The thought process behind cupping is to draw blood/fluid into the treated area, breaking some blood capillaries to cause a release of blood, therefore removing toxins. Healing process occurs and replenishes blood lost.

Is Cupping Right For You?

My experience with cupping has truly changed my attitude towards my migraines. I used to get them so frequently and would feel like, when talking to western medical professionals, they couldn’t wait to send me off with drugs rather than getting down to the root of the cause. When I started treating my shoulder muscles with the cupping I instantly was able to compare the intense tension prior to the treatment and the fully relaxed muscle afterwards. It was so comforting feeling and seeing a difference without having to take medication. With my migraines, the triggers were and still are not eating on time, not sleeping, dehydration etc. However, by treating the shoulder muscles with cupping, I’ve discovered just how closely related all these muscles are, enough that one muscle stiffness in a seemingly unrelated area can cause pain a farther area.

Muscle pain and stiffness in the trapezius or nearby muscles like the splenius and suboccipital muscles lead up to the skull and can cause migraines and pain around the eye and frontal portion of head. Relaxing my tense muscles decreases the affect an outside force has on triggering my migraine. Since targeting those muscles consistently, the amount of migraines I’ve received have reduced drastically. Even as I write this, I can’t remember the last time I had a migraine, whereas, prior to my treatments my migraines were consistently arriving like clock-work. Basically, my increased sensitivity to migraines have diminished significantly and I can only attribute it to my cupping use. I would highly recommended cupping if you have back or shoulder issues and have unexplained migraines or extreme sensitivity to your triggers. Always speak with your doctor first to make sure this is the right treatment for you. Although I can’t tell the future and completely cross out the possibility of migraines to come, I’m completely grateful for the reduction in migraines I achieved by treating the shoulder muscles. Of course, if cupping helps, you still want to avoid your known triggers but cupping may just give you a bit more time before the migraines attack!

Also Read: Magnesium: The Remedy to Menstrual Cramps

References

• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2982.2009.01901.x?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19515127/
• https://www.cedars-sinai.org/blog/cupping-therapy.html
• https://familydoctor.org/condition/migraine/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4488563/
• https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/16554-cupping
• https://rehabaccess.com/two-muscle-groups-that-cause-headaches-on-top-of-the-head/
• https://spechtphysicaltherapy.com/tension-headaches-it-may-be-your-traps/