From Tradition To Innovation: Dr. Tom Ingegno On The Real Power Of Cupping & Holistic Health
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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius podcast. My guest today is Tom Ingenio. We're going to talk about his book, The Cupping Book. He's a certified acupuncturist and I get acupuncture and I've had cupping as well. But I know that they work really well together.

But again, Dr. Tom is a doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. He's great. He specializes in integrative modalities and loves to present topics ranging from cupping to other treatment options. So welcome, Tom. Thanks for coming. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. I guess one suggestion for listeners is that if you get cupping, make sure to tell your partner or your spouse who don't accuse you of cheating because it looks sometimes like either an octopus attacked you or something.

Someone was giving you hickeys. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. It's a perfectly circular hickey in a lot of cases. Yeah. But still, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

But welcome. Tell me about your background and how did you get interested in Chinese medicine and acupuncture and cupping? Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, when I was growing up, I wanted to go into medicine. I, you know, I thought if I wanted to help people, I had to become an MD, you know, and I was pretty much on that course. As I got older and I got into college, I was in my pre-med program and I took a Chinese philosophy class and

And I did a Tai Chi elective. And then through a course of events that I think were almost serendipitous, I had very little control over. I was home on junior year break and I got a postcard in the mail for an acupuncture school. And I didn't look back. You know, I signed up for that acupuncture school.

in the intersession of my junior year, which was a graduate program, but I already had enough credits to get in because this graduate program, there's no undergrad for Chinese medicine. So this program was going to give me a bachelor's in professional health science instead of what I was going to get was biology and then give me the master's that would allow me to get my license. The doctorate didn't exist at the time when I graduated. That was something that was added later. So I went back to get that.

Okay. All right. So how long have you been doing the acupuncture and the cupping and everything? Well, it'll be 25 years officially this May, I think. Okay.

Oh, really? Wow. Okay. So you do the acupuncture, but what's special about the cupping? The cupping. Well, so the interesting thing about cupping is cupping has been a long time associated with Chinese medicine. It's not even Chinese in origin. So the Chinese were writing about it, or should I say the physicians were writing about it because it existed a lot longer than this in China too. Yeah.

in about 300 AD was when they were writing about, you know, hey, get off your high horse. This is folk medicine, but we should be doing it for our patients because it's so effective. Cupping probably originates somewhere back around, you know, four or five thousand years ago. We're not sure if it's from Egypt, Persia, Greece. We know all those cultures wrote about it. The oldest text that we have that references it

was the Ebers papyrus, which dates to about 1515 BC in Egypt. Now, if they wrote it down, they've been practicing it for a while and they wrote down a very detailed description of it. We know Hippocrates wrote about it, but it kind of dispersed across the globe. It even ended up in the New World. We're not sure how it got there, but it was in Russia. It was in Africa. It was in Asia.

And it was always, like I said, a folk medicine. The longer I'd been in practice, the more I realized that, you know, I might be able to carry a full book of appointments every week, but I'm not even gonna be able to scratch the surface of the population that I wanna help.

one way to do that in my head was to write a book to teach people who are not practitioners these techniques that you know we used to do grandma always used to do it you know whoever was your household healer would be doing cupping

Certainly there's movie references, even in the US, The Godfather Part II, Zorba the Greek. These are scenes, have scenes where there was cupping. And when I used to teach it at one of the acupuncture schools in Manhattan, all the foreign students would say, oh, grandma used to do that. And it was something that, you know, from a Mediterranean background, my last name's Italian, I had some familiarity with it in my family. I didn't have anybody that was practicing it directly. So, yeah,

you know, to be able to give somebody a technique that's safe that we can do nowadays without glass and without fire. Cause those are the ways we do it in our clinic with the use of silicone cups or plastic cups that have one way valves. You can put these on pretty safely. Uh,

on friends and family in your home. You can even get them on yourself. So with some guidelines and some basic rules and, you know, explaining how the cups work and what types of cups are available is really what this book does. So within a few hours of reading the book, you should be up in a, you know, a cupping master at home, you know.

And that's really what I was trying to do was get it in the hands of as many people as I could so they could take care of themselves. Well, how are they supposed to do that if a lot of the sites are on the back? Well, this is why, you know, we do discuss that in the book. You know, it's always good to have a partner, but they go on so easily. I remember teaching my kids when they were as young as five to put them on my back. Oh, but were you having other people put it on your back, not you? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Well, how is it done when, uh, you know, I used to just basically, uh, is someone eating up the cup of the flame and then sticking it to you or like, Oh, no, that's that, that I would say for the professionals, uh, these cups are, uh, silicone. So they're basically, uh, like a half circle, a half of a tennis ball.

Uh, and basically you put them where you want and you squish them down, pushes the air out and creates the vacuum. So you don't need the flame to eat the oxygen in this case. Uh, some kits have a one-way valve at the top and they come with a pump, right? So you put the pump on the top, you pump it a few times when it's on the back, creates that vacuum, you take the pump off and you let the cup sit there for. Okay.

Oh, you put a pump on the back end of the cup. I guess it has a little nozzle. Yeah. And it seals off the... Yeah, it's like a one-way valve. Yeah. So what'll happen is that that pistol, it kind of looks like a pistol, will pull air up every time you squeeze the trigger. But then when you take that off, the one-way valve drops so you don't lose the suction. All right. How do you know how much to pressurize it? What if you do too much? So...

What should you look for? So this is where we get the feedback from the person, right? It should be tolerable. It should be mild to moderate in sensation. It shouldn't cause too much pain. And certainly this is where if you're going to do somebody's back, you have some feedback with them. Is this okay? Is that too much? The other reason I like the silicone cups is it doesn't seem to get that strong. The pumps generally have a limit.

When you buy the kit, it'll say no more than three pumps, no more than five pumps, depending on the kit. But those pump sets tend to have clear plastic. So you can see how much is actually getting sucked up into the skin, into the cup, and kind of eyeball how intense it is. There's got to be too much. I mean, besides eyeballing it, what should you look for? Well, what I'm saying is that

It's going to be patient feedback. The person you're doing it to will say it's too much. Well, how do they know? I mean, sometimes it's very strong. Yeah. My acupressure is to be like, oh, you know, so it's never like I can't take it, but sometimes it's definitely stronger than other times. Yeah. It's going to come down to comfort and then you're going to look for the color of the skin.

uh, if the skin starts turning purple, you know, you're, you're done. So you would just leave it on. If you, you have the ability to modulate the dose based either on the intensity or the time you leave it on. So I would caution people to air, uh, you know, air on the side of caution, go milder and leave it on for a little bit longer. Well, and that, I mean, when it's darker, it seems like that spot, you know, really needs it. Sometimes it's like,

a dark purple, like almost like a black. Yeah. Yeah. There, there's, there's some truth to that. Uh, but there's a few different reasons why that could be happening too. Uh,

You know, you're breaking the capillaries at the surface of the skin, which is what gives the mark. Sometimes people's vascular health is not as good, so they'll come up darker. Sometimes people have really good circulation, so you have a lot of blood in that area. That'll make it darker. So traditionally, they would say, oh, if it's darker, there's more stagnation there. That may or may not be the case. You also have to take into consideration blood.

people's lifestyle, right? If they're moving more, chances are they have more angiogenesis, meaning there's more blood vessels that are formed on that upper level, and that's going to cause deeper disease. Okay. What is the effect of cupping? I've never read about it. It just seems to, I guess, relax a larger area than needles would get to. But like, what's the connection with it?

So why would we use it in conjunction with acupuncture? You kind of touched on it there. It's a little bit more horseshoes and hand grenades. Both are going to increase circulation to an area. Cupping is when we want to affect the whole muscle group. Now we can release a whole muscle group with a needle. Cupping seems to be...

little bit broader in effect. We know that putting a cup on increases circulation up to six inches under the skin, so we're even affecting the tissue beneath the muscles. So this is one of the reasons they use it for chest congestion, chronic bronchitis and those kind of things people can see some improvement with.

pain still seems to be the number one reason people use it. So, I mean, instead of needles, sometimes it just... No, no. Sometimes it's just preference. Sometimes it's patient preference. Sometimes it's practitioner preference. And it

Different implications. You know, for acupuncture needles, I can treat a lot of internal disorders. We can regulate things that would be coming down to neurotransmitter, anxiety, stress, those kind of things. Where cupping, traditionally, we can...

create a pretty relaxing environment with that and get people into, you know, rest and digest. But the needles themselves tend to do a better job at that. If we're talking broad muscle pain, a lot of people lean more on the cupping. Okay. What areas of the body are amenable to it? Which ones are not? Like I've had it on, you know, like my shoulders, but it falls off if you don't watch out. Well, yeah, you know, this is,

Yeah. Broader flat muscles, you know, tend to work best. So neck, shoulders, low back seems to be another great area. A lot of people get them on their thighs, quads, hamstrings, even the IT band. The good news about the silicone cups is they tend to be a little bit more conforming to the body. So they're also available in wider sizes.

So you can kind of get them on forearms and biceps and they tend to stick well. If they are going to fall off, it's either due to body hair or just not getting a good suction. A lot of times we can make that

more effective with some oil. Oh, you put oil in the skin or lotion or what? Yeah, yeah. Lotion will work too. But anything, you know, if you want to really turn up the analgesic effect, you could put down like BioFreeze. There's a whole bunch of Chinese herbal formulas that we discuss in the book that are very fancy, you know, Bengays, if you will. But you get a lot of added benefit from that as well. And one of the biggest benefits... BioFreeze and all them, they irritate

The skin and that's kind of their mechanism to, um, yeah, yeah. It's pretty funny where we talk specifically when we're talking about that menthol and camphor, uh, it is confusing the nervous system on the surface of the skin. Uh, but in this case, we're adding it to increase, uh, the ability of the skin to, uh, basically close the pores off a little bit and increase the suction. Okay. Yeah.

How long should the cups be on? And again, when is, uh, when should they come off? When, you know, top tops, I would say is 15 minutes. You know, if, if somebody wants a milder treatment, you can leave them on for a few minutes, put them back on, uh,

The home cupping sets go on and off a lot quicker in some cases than the fire cupping. And fire cupping can be put on pretty quickly, but this way you can just pop them off, take a look, make sure the skin isn't too dark, and then put them back on. Does it ever happen with a person's skin for some reason just...

They keep popping off like every second. It depends. It depends. Are you rejecting them or something? I wouldn't say reject. I would say either the curvature of the skin. Like some people really want to get them close to the base of the skull, right? You know, smaller ones we can kind of get up there. But if there's hair under the cup, we know we're leaving a little hole in that seal and it's...

and it's going to slowly leak off. Even on the top of the trap, sometimes this happens because the curvature of that muscle, you know, so the better you can get them on initially, the longer they'll stay.

I see. Okay. And these are recommended. I mean, would you do acupuncture to the same area? Yeah, a lot of times we do. And normally we would either do cupping after the acupuncture or we do in clinic something called needle cupping, where you use a shorter needle with a shorter handle and you put the needle in and then you put a cup over it. Right.

Why did you do that for? It's a combination. If you have a really deep muscle knot, uh, you put the needle in to start stimulating that knot and then put the cup over to draw more blood, you know? So it's kind of like, uh, you know, those vacuum seal devices that they used for marinating like steaks and stuff, right? You know, it's, you're basically pulling that blood through that tight knot, but you've already started that breaking up with a, with a needle.

Okay. So essentially the big value of the cup is that it's pulling the skin away from the area and I guess stimulating blood flow to enter areas where it may not. Yeah. Well, you know, the body's a closed system. So most of the tissue should have some blood going to it. What ends up happening is when we have inflammation in that tissue, the blood is not circulating as quickly as it needs to. We get lactic acid, we get

cytokines, we get metabolic waste stuck in that tissue. So the cup goes on, pulls the skin up into it. That's going to create a void between the skin and the fascia, but then the fascia will pull away from the muscle a little bit, create a void between the fascia and the muscle. Because it's a closed system, the blood then comes out of the muscle. Fresh blood will come in behind it. So it helps get

just old stagnant blood into basically the lymphatic system to clean up while fresh blood comes in the tissue and helps promote healing. Well, if the body is a closed system, then how do you have static blood? Like where would it build up? Well, that's exactly the point. The inflammation in the tissue is not, static is the term they use. It's not not moving. It's just not moving as efficiently as we want it. It's like sluggish. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

How sluggish can blood get? Well, you know, I mean, if we're talking about blood clots and we don't we don't talk about that in the book, you definitely don't want to be putting cups on somebody that has blood clots. But, you know, blood clots are ultimate blood stagnation. I mean, it's just blood that's congealed.

If you've worked out, if you have a traumatic injury, the swelling that's in that area is the stagnation. Gotcha. Okay. So, I mean, how much better do patients seem to do when they have

Cupping and acupuncture versus just acupuncture. It's really, we have a lot of people that are doing standalone cupping sessions because they tend to be shorter and somebody might not have the time to do a full acupuncture session. It really depends on the condition, you know, so we wouldn't necessarily be doing cupping on every patient that's coming in for fertility, but we see a lot of fertility. So it's case by case and it's going to be what the patient needs. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Have you ever heard of like, well, I'm sure you heard of moxibustion. They put like this. Absolutely. Yeah. On you that smells like garbage weed. That's just. It's mugwort is what it is. Yeah. Do you use that? Absolutely. Moxibustion actually predates acupuncture. Yeah.

We had fire long before we could work with metal. The first acupuncture needles were gold and silver and they broke easily. So even when we started with acupuncture, there was still a predominance of moxibustion. Mugwort. They were like animal bones. The first metal needles were gold and silver. They would use fish bones.

ribs in a lot of cases. Um, but those were more to prick the surface of the skin. I'm talking about retention. So I think that, that, um, acupuncture and cupping was even discovered. Well, you know, I, I think a lot of it, uh, at least with the acupuncture, it was, uh, it was,

It probably started first by touch. It was probably like massage, right? You press on something, somebody feels a little bit better, and then you were trying to stimulate that area with different things. So moxibustion would be stimulating that with heat. Stimulating it with something sharp would be, you know, where they probably started with acupuncture. And, you know, like I said, fish ribs or even a sharpened stone. You know, there's a lot of legends around this. We really don't know anything.

it's always funny to me where we know that moxibustion is older, but they'll talk about somebody, you know, accidentally getting hit with a sharpened stick or something and then feeling better. Uh, those are nice stories, but we, we really can't say that's how this whole thing. When was, uh, the first instance in writing of, uh, you know, acupuncture and moxibustion and cupping and all that stuff. So, so moxibustion, like I said, was probably about, uh, four or 5,000 years ago. Uh,

Unfortunately, given China took great notes, but between the warring states and this part of China takes over another part, they destroy all the writings. We've lost a lot to history. We just don't know exactly where it comes from. And then as we're finding stuff out, it takes a long time for it to even get translated into English. So what we were taught in school was it just kind of developed over time.

That seems to be, you know, slow and steady, but there isn't really a clear, here's how it evolved. Well, I know there was a book called the yellow emperor that talked about heating up. Yeah, that is the first, that is the first textbook we have in completion. Uh, but the yellow emperors, uh, internal classics is what it's called. The Wong D. Nei Jing, uh, reverberates.

references, older books. Most of those war, we don't, we don't have, there's even some references to physicians that we know existed, but we know nothing about them. Supposedly some of them wrote volumes and volumes of texts and we've never recovered any of those. Oh man. Yeah. When was the yellow emperor, um, computer have been published? Uh, so somewhere between 2,700 years ago and 2,300. Uh, and

And there's a little debate about which things are original, which things were added later. And even that has three different books within it. Wow. That's so amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe it was this long ago and it refers to things even older. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and that's kind of the weird part, right? We go that far back. And even with the best note-taking system, you know, another...

Dynasty moves in and says, no, we're not going to talk about that anymore. Even traditional modalities and different techniques within acupuncture came and went based on who was ruling China and who was in their court that was their leader.

you know, head physician. So the Yellow Emperor's internal classics, there is one crazy theory out there because it's a conversation between the Yellow Emperor, Wang Di, and his imperial physician that goes by the name of Qi Bo. There's some people that

believe that Shibo is a weird Chinese approximation of Hippocrates, the name Hippocrates. So they'll say, oh, it might have been this Greek guy came to China and here he is talking to an emperor. Now, the likelihood that that happened is very small, but it is a theory that's been floated out there.

I mean, was there any cultural exchange? And I know we're getting into the history now, but... Yeah, yeah. There definitely was, but we don't know what level. And it was not like... It's not like it was written down that well, right? We can look at other cultures and see, like, even... I was reading a book about the history of moxibustion, actually, and they were talking about how this herb was used in Europe as well. And he was pointing...

I think he was trying to make the point that like even before we had the Silk Trade Road, there was a lot of this cultural exchange to the point where they had found tombs of redheaded people wearing kilts in Afghanistan. So they were definitely coming from Scandinavia or Scotland or, you know, these were these were more Viking looking people ending up somewhere in the Middle East.

And we know that there were people from China in the Middle East around the same time. So it's likely that people from Europe did have some contact with China. But whether they met somewhere in the middle or whether they made it all the way to, you know, Asia proper, we're not too clear on. So are there any unorthodox for cupping that you've discovered?

Not, not me discovered, but there is a few websites that, that post, uh, oh my God, can you believe what this is? Uh, you know, for, for jokes, some people will put crazy stuff on people's backs, including like big fish bowls, you know, uh, big clay pots and stuff like that. Just, I, I, I doubt it has any therapeutic value, but it's, it takes a funny picture.

Yeah, that's really weird. Yeah, you know, people try anything. You know, they have cups shaped like buttocks that are supposed to do, you know, butt enlargement. That doesn't work, but somebody will buy that. Okay. Are there any places in the body where they shouldn't go? Like, wouldn't that work in the head or they couldn't suck him to the scalp? So there is a Muslim tradition called hijama, which...

Which evolved separately on, you know, it was, it's cupping, but it came from that faith where they do a lot of cupping on the head and they'll do it with bleeding. So they'll prick the skin first and then put the cup on. And I don't know that one, but I certainly have seen enough photos where, you know, people will shave their heads so they can get cupped. Interesting. You mentioned earlier that sometimes they'll be, they'll, you know, they'll put a needle in and they'll put a cup over it. Yeah.

Have you seen that to be more efficacious or no?

And then you're actually sliding this cup across the surface of the skin. It does make it more intense, but you can work a whole muscle group quickly. So in that case, I would probably prefer that to just even the needle cupping. Oh, where it doesn't stay in one spot, but it...

booyah rat stares over like a part of skin back and forth yeah so so like let's say you're you lay down and you say look my my everything from my shoulders to my low back hurt well you know both sides of the spine we've got these two muscle groups or two sides of the same muscle group called the erectors right there they're a big wide muscle group i can take one cup

Put some oil down your back, put the cup on, and literally slide that cup and down the whole muscle group. Now, instead of getting these perfectly circular bruises, what you end up getting is like this big, it looks like you got hit with a belt. Still doesn't hurt, but it looks like you'll have this big purple line up and down. Why does it create bruises? Does it, like out of the capillaries, does it? Yeah. So the small, yeah, the small microcapillaries get broken from the suction.

Do they heal properly? I mean, what? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So this is kind of like the long-term, uh, effect after the cupping, right? So you've already increased circulation there, uh, and you should get some relief from that. But over the next few days, as that bruising, as that hickey starts to break up, uh, you have to keep sending blood to that area, which will help repair that tissue, but also break down that, that blood, uh, you know, the bruise. So yes, it's, it is absolutely healthy. They'll, they'll heal, uh,

Uh, it's not something you need to worry. Yeah. Interesting. Does it work? Like, does it do any things like varicose veins or does it, you got to, you, you want to be careful with those, especially if they're, they're darker or they're on the verge of becoming a deep vein thrombosis or something there. You do not want to cup over those. You already have like kind of this old stagnant blood that you can't really use cupping to treat them. Oh, okay.

Interesting. Do they change the skin itself? Like, could this be used to improve the condition of your skin or it's not really for that? I've seen some people say that they can help with cellulitis, particularly when it kind of looks a little bit like cotton, cottage cheese, but the results don't seem to be that long lasting. And I've

I don't know if it's an ethical thing to do. I really think they're selling an aesthetic kind of treatment, but that's not going to remove the cellulite. Okay. Gotcha. So what's, what do you find people are most happy about with the cupping? Like,

What are they using it for most commonly? I, you know, uh, neck, shoulder pain, low back pain, uh, workout recovery. And I think they like the fact that even after a few minutes, once you get that circulation going, your body goes into that rest and digest stage. So even though the cups can be quite intense after a couple of minutes, you know, a lot of people fall asleep during the. Yeah. What are you going to kind of, um, I don't like a zoned out state or something. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. Does that happen more with acupuncture or with cupping? I, both. It's one of these weird things. Uh, and I think it comes down to the nature of our autonomic nervous system. That's our fight or flight versus our rest and digest. If we're doing a function that's in rest and digest and

And one of those is increasing circulation. Our body will start doing the other rest and digest functions. So if I manually am increasing circulation by putting a cup on, your body can't tell if you're relaxed or if you have a vacuum on your back pulling this blood through. So what will end up happening is you start breathing slower and deeper, which is another rest and digest function. And the next thing you know, your neurotransmitters, your brainwaves start changing to this relaxed state.

And that'll happen with acupuncture too. That happens about 10 or 15 minutes after treatment or into treatment, I should say. It is kind of zoned out. You're in this like middle world between awake and asleep. It's weird. Yeah. If we look at it with a ECG, the brainwaves that are formed are very similar to a meditative state. Hmm.

I guess that's all. Yeah. That's also another benefit is you have to lay in one place. You don't want to move. You want to just breathe deep and relax. And then, you know, you also get that benefit of like the pseudo sleep, this recovery too. Yeah. Yeah. I think the new term is what do they call it? Non-sleep deep rest. Oh,

Yeah. I mean, they base it off of studies in a yoga technique called yoga nidra, which you're laying down, but you're trying not to fall asleep. You're just trying to relax yourself. Gotcha. What's the, it's been around so long, but I guess it's been used quite a bit. Is there any future of cupping? Are there new things kind of coming online? Well, you know, some, you know, everybody wants to put a bunch of technology together, right? So there's certain cups now that,

will heat up, you know, so they'll, they'll be plastic cups with a little bit of heater in it or plastic cups with red light therapy in it. Um, I think it remains to be seen how strong those red light, cause they're just little LEDs. Uh, if, if it's a strong enough frequency to actually do what red light therapy does, you know, they're fun. I guess people can play with them, but I wouldn't put too much stock in the, the additional benefits. Yeah. At

That makes sense. And again, what are some of the comments that people give you after they've done a couple of cupping sessions? What are they noticing, feeling, experiencing? Yeah, you know, I have a pretty good group of people that solely come in for cupping, right? And some of them are heavy workout people. Some of them just know they feel better afterwards. Some of them have chronic injuries and pain.

Normally the feedback is they feel some near immediate relief, but then they're able to function a little bit better throughout, you know, between sessions and people that are doing it regularly. We want to give some time for those bruises to clear up. So a lot of them are coming in maybe once a week.

What happens if you try to do cupping over an area that was bruised maybe like four or five days ago, but still not gone? It's just, it doesn't seem to have the same effect. The other issue we don't want to have happen is like too much cupping in an area. Sometimes you'll get a little blood blister on the surface of the skin. We want to avoid that. That's very rare. But one of the ways we avoid doing that is to not cup over something that's already been cupped and still has a position. Yeah.

And how close or far apart should the cups be? It really depends. No, this is the other kind of cool thing that happens. When you're the practitioner and you can see this, if I want to walk up and down your back and I want to cover you with a lot of cups, if I put one cup on and then I put another cup on, as the skin's pulling up into those cups, the cups get closer together. We're running out of loose skin to kind of put the cups on.

You'll never get them, like you'll, if you put them right next to each other where the lips of the cups are actually touching, when you take them off, there will be some space between those cups, you know, where the circle mark is. Oh, interesting. Very interesting. And you cup over organs, like on the stomach. Oh yeah, you can. Traditionally, they would use this for digestive disorders. So you can do, like organ massage manipulations, which were straight, but I don't know if, uh,

you know, if they use cupping for it. They do. Once again, if you wanted to do the sliding cupping, you can, if somebody has diarrhea or constipation, you can slide the cup either in the direction of the colon or

Uh, if you're constipated, uh, and then if you have diarrhea, you go in the opposite direction of the colon. So that's, uh, you know, but in most cases you can even just put them on to get some more blood flow to the internal organ. And even the low back will do that too, because we're getting the effect six inches of the body. So you could do it either on the low back or you can do it on the abdomen directly.

Oh, either way, it'll hit. It should hit the intestines, both large and small. You can put it somewhere near the stomach to help the stomach circulation. Very interesting. Okay.

So, um, Leah, let's restate the name of your book and, uh, I would get that's available anywhere books are sold. Absolutely. It's any online retailer. Um, it is literally called the cupping book and it's, it's meant to give people the tools they need to do it at home. Well, very good. So we'll encourage people to get your book. Oh, thank you, man. Yeah. And is there, um, where do you work with people? Like what, uh, what city, what area? I'm, I'm in Baltimore, Maryland. Um,

My clinic's name is Charm City Integrative Health. Charm City Integrative is that website. Okay, very good in that area. Excellent. Yo, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Unusual subject, but personally benefited. And I'm glad you came. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much. If you like this podcast, please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on iTunes. You've been listening to the Finding Genius Podcast with Richard Jacobs.

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