We really ought to demand more from our role models.
During the recent Olympics, I was disgusted when Michael Phelps showed up on the pool deck for the first time. As soon as I saw the circular bruises all over his torso, I was crestfallen. Another elite athlete practicing nonsensical alternative medicine.
Honestly, if an individual person wants to waste their time and money on magic, I could not care less. But when you are the greatest swimmer who ever lived, with millions of little kids looking up to you, don’t you have an obligation to act responsibly?
I get it, athletes are credulous and many are willing to try anything that might, whether there is evidence for it or not, give them even the slightest edge. In sports such as swimming, where races can be decided in hundredths of seconds, even the placebo effect of a dubious treatment may be the difference between winning and losing. After all, once the body has been honed and the skills mastered, it all comes down to confidence.
But if you think about some of these things, even briefly, they make no sense. The practice of cupping is an ancient Chinese custom that pre-dates understanding of biology and physiology.
Sidenote: For a lot of people that antiquity actually lends credibility. That makes no sense to me. Why would you trust something that pre-dates better information?
Back in the day, it was perhaps natural to think that there was some kind of magical life force that made us tick. Let’s call it Chi (or qi) because, well, that’s what they called it.
If someone was sick, obviously it wasn’t because some microscopic organism was playing havoc with our microscopic cells, we didn’t know about those things. We couldn’t see it, so obviously what ailed us had to be demons, or a Chi alignment problem.
Cupping, like acupuncture, was used to bring our Chi back to balance to cure disease because we didn’t have actual medicine. When it worked, or rather when a person’s body naturally got better (our bodies are amazing at self-healing) the nonsense practice got the credit.
We live in an era of science, though. Magical concepts such as Chi won’t do for a modern person, so we layer current concepts on top of the old superstitious practice. Basically, the new practitioner makes up a bunch of sciencey-sounding stuff that preys on the scientific illiteracy her victim.
So, instead of balancing Chi, cupping now improves blood flow to aching muscles and helps them recover more quickly.
Here is a description from one website that advocates the practice: “The vacuum formed by cupping draws up the old non-circulating stagnant blood and sticky fluids from the area, bringing them up to the surface and away from the injury so that healthy free circulation can be restored to the affected area, thus creating space for oxygen, living cells and nutrients for faster recovery.”
And this: “Cupping can leave marks, which indicates that the stagnation or disease has been moved from the deeper tissue layers to the surface.”
Please excuse my language, but what a steaming pile of crap.
Those “marks” are bruises. Bruises are caused by capillaries breaking and blood pooling and stagnating. Pretty much the exact opposite of the claims.
So, why do so many elite athletes fall for this stuff?
I suppose it might come from being so singularly focused on being the best you can be in your sport, you don’t have time to do the research and learn how to think about things critically.
There is also a tonne of money to be had, so unscrupulous snake oil peddlars and practitioners, who have themselves been duped into believing the hype, are well-motivated.
About the only good thing I can say about the cupping fad is it is likely to be gone by the next Olympics. Unfortunately, it will almost certainly be replaced by something else.
I think we deserve better from our modern-day heroes. They should be modeling hard work, dedication and sportsmanship not pre-scientific superstition.
