What is Cupping and How Can It Support Fertility?

Chinese Medicine Cupping

What is Cupping?

Cupping is a traditional medicine practice from Ancient Chinese, Egyptian and Middle Eastern cultures.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is the type of alternative medicine I am trained in, we practise dry and fire cupping.

This involves placing suction cups or heated cups on the body to draw out toxins and stagnation, either of blood or Qi (energy blockages).

Cupping helps to bring nourished blood and Qi (vital energy) to the area of the body to boost healing.

How Can Cupping Help With Fertility?

To treat fertility, the cups are placed on the lower abdomen to clear Qi stagnation and blood stasis and nourish the reproductive organs. We often do this in the follicular stage of the cycle.

Fire cupping or cupping using a flame to produce the suction on the abdomen helps to clear blockages of cold from the uterus.

In conjunction with fertility acupuncture and moxa, cupping can optimise your fertility outcome by clearing the cold stasis that may have been preventing implantation.

Cupping also helps to reduce pain, boost the immune system and help with headaches.

What Are the Side Effects of Cupping?

Although cupping is a relaxing treatment, it can cause bruising marks that are quite distinctive because they appear in circular shapes.

The colour of the cupping marks can be used for diagnostic purposes. This helps us to understand the severity of blood stasis or Qi stagnation.

• Dark / purple = blood stasis

• Bright red = heat

• Light red, disappears quickly = blood deficiency

The darker the colour, the more blockages in the fertility organs. Bruises can disappear almost immediately or they can last for a few days. When cupping is used for fertility purposes on the abdomen, the marks usually disappear almost straight away.

What Fertility Conditions Can Cupping Help With?

• Implantation failure

• Recurrent miscarriage

• PCOS / Insulin resistance

• Endometriosis

• Fibroids, polyps or cysts

• Reproductive immunology such as:

• Elevated NK cells

• Sticky bloods (APS antiphospholipid syndrome)

This is because all of these conditions have a Blood Stasis or Cold Stasis component in Chinese Medicine. Through cupping, we are moving the 'bad blood' and Cold and eliminating toxins that contribute to these diagnoses.

What is the Optimal Time of the Cycle for Cupping?

If you have PCOS, sticky blood or elevated NK cells and you are TTC naturally book your cupping session for the follicular phase.

If you are preparing for FET, book your cupping for the follicular or the luteal phase.

If we are focusing on clearing cold (low progesterone) book your cupping for the luteal phase or menstrual bleed.

With every fertility acupuncture package booking you get a free cupping session.

For individual sessions, add cupping to your acupuncture treatment for just £10.

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