 If you've ever seen the Michael Phelps image with him in his cupping marks at the Olympics, it became very popularized for post-recovery for athletes. Hi, I'm Dr. Jamie Colgis. I'm a doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Most people come to cupping right now very popular for like post-injury or just chronic pain conditions. All the cups have the same function, which is what makes cupping cupping. You're creating a vacuum. It is pulling the skin layer up, the fascia layer, a little bit of the muscle layer too, like to call it like a reverse massage. So instead of pushing the skin and fascia and muscle down, we're pulling it up. And that's creating space inside those layers. And that allows for the muscles to relax once the cups are released. But it also allows more blood flow to get into the area. The other thing that happens is, especially if there's a lot of overuse of the muscle, there's little damage that happens in the muscle layer and blood can kind of get stuck there. So when that suction is created, some of that dead blood is getting pulled up to the surface and that is what's creating that bruise. It's not tender like a bruise because the cups aren't doing damage. Like if you hit yourself and you get a bruise after, that's the blood pooling, but it's tender because there's damage that's happening. With cupping, it's just pulling that blood up. There's no damage that's happening to the tissue, so the bruise is not tender. It is a traditional form of therapy and it can be used for the common cold, asthma, other lung conditions. It can also be used on the abdomen for digestive issues like nausea or vomiting or just general indigestion. Most commonly used for pain conditions. So any aches and pains, cupping can help.