Let’s not start believing ancient techniques will cup-grade your performance

They’re swimming in it. Our Olympic champions — and they are clearly champions in the pool — are also wading through some murky alternative therapy waters.

Keen-eyed viewers will have seen the circular hickeys spotted on the chests and backs of swimmers, including Kyle Chalmers (who apparently also likes a quick nip from his pet croc to get the blood flowing). Swimmer Michael Phelps was big on it last Olympics.

It’s from cupping, a weird technique often celebrated for being “ancient” — or merely for being spotted on celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Victoria Beckham and (no surprise) Gwyneth Paltrow.  

With dry cupping, you heat a cup, put it on the skin, and the flesh bulges into that cup because of the vacuum. Some use suction cups to suck the flesh in, leaving a round bruise. With wet cupping, the skin is pierced so blood flows into the chalice of choice.

Even the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health — which you’d think would look kindly on something non-mainstream — found most of the research on cupping is “of low quality” and that “cupping may help reduce pain, but the evidence for this isn’t very strong”.

It also warns that cupping can cause “persistent skin discolouration, scars, burns, infections, and may worsen eczema or psoriasis”.

Alarmingly, there have been (rare) cases of bleeding inside the skull after scalp cupping, and anaemia from blood loss if you go the wet cupping route.

A Cochrane system review found it was not supported by scientific rigorous evidence. “Cupping therapy may have benefit in treating pain-related conditions, acne and facial paralysis, however, confirmed conclusions could not be drawn due to the low quality of the original studies,” it found.

In 2017, researchers at The Alfred warned of the rare but possible dangers of accidental burns, in particular when cupping was “not performed correctly or by a registered practitioner”.

Those spruiking the benefits of getting people in their cups often rely on the fact it’s been around for ages in Egyptian, Chinese, Islamic and other traditions. To steal from Tim Minchin, “I don’t go in for ancient wisdom/I don’t believe just ‘cos ideas are tenacious it means they’re worthy”.

Maybe it’s relaxing to have blobs of your back sucked into a glass. Maybe the placebo effect helps it ease pain. Maybe it’s OK for Olympians to do absolutely anything they think might give them an edge.

But they’re also contributing to another insta-celebrity wellness scam. Health clinics all over Australia pushing the technique are bolstered by the endorsement.

Some of them claim it will help with anxiety or depression — and that’s where a seemingly harmless “natural” therapy can turn dangerous, if it diverts people from proper treatment.

A cruise through Australian organisations promoting it reveals claims it can treat colds or bronchitis — again, dangerous in the pandemic era if it diverts anyone from proper medical care. Others claim it can treat high blood pressure.

Cupping probably didn’t speed any athletes up, and it may not have slowed anyone down, but it’s yet another example of potentially dangerous woo-woo — in the flesh.