Essay On Cupping

Cupping is an ancient traditional therapeutic technique that has been practiced, for thousands of years and till now, particularly in East Asian countries [1]. In Egypt and Arabic countries, cupping therapy is known as "Al-Hijamah”. Hijamah is Arabic word which literary means “to do cupping”. The process of Hijamah is also locally known as applying seenghi because in the ancient period it was done by using cow horns or other hollow animal horns [2]. Recently, the number of followers of this traditional medicine is increasing in the western world [3]. This therapy involves the application of a suction cup to a localized area of the skin; this area is termed acupoint [1, 3]. Although its exact mechanism of efficacy remains obscure, cupping is mainly prescribed as a treatment for chronic pain. It is also indicated for an array of respiratory, neurological, gastro-enterological and gynecological disorders [1].
From the last decade, there is great interest in traditional cupping, as scientific studies in a number of studies has emerged it as good healer for vast number of diseases. In the field of dermatology, cupping has been used, with varying degree of success, for the treatment of skin diseases [4]; as cutaneous infections [5], urticaria [6], acne

It has been reported to be effective in the treatment of acne vulgaris with efficacy rate of more than 90% [7, 12-14]. Pan (2005) [7] reported the highest rate of efficacy of cupping therapy in the treatment of acne patients (96.8%) and this may be attributed to a Chinese-drug facemask he used together with cupping in the treatment of his patients. Wang [15] reported successful treatment of 87% of patients with eczema using wet cupping. In another study by Jun (1992) [16] reported improvement of 90% of vitiligo patients and Zhao et al. (1991) [17] reported improvement of 98.4% of psoriatic patients treated with