I think myself is not the only one who asks this question. When I search on Google, there are 731,000 results for this question.
I am not a real fan of exercising, but I need to exercise every day to keep fit and be healthy. As most of us known that exercise is really a good habit, so do I. I know exercise is a good thing but it’s just hard for me to keep doing that. After exercising for several months, there is one day, after running for an hour, I found my knees really hurt. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it at first, because it was occurred several times before. I thought it would recover by itself really quickly within one or two days. However, I was wrong this time. I got a lot more pains after the second day’s running hour. I asked one of my friends who has a lot of experiences with exercising especially running. She told me it might because of my overuse of knees or overstretched tendons. She said that repeated bending or high stress exercises such as lunges and plyometrics can irritate the kneecap joint. Overstretched may also cause the pain of runner's knee. Then I asked what should I do with my pains? She said rest would be the best option.
“Are there any ways to help me recover quicker?” I asked “Maybe you could go for an acupuncturist and have some cupping treatments.” She replied.
I know what is cupping because I am Chinese and I am familiar with Traditional Chinese Medicine. My parents believe in TCM a lot more than I do. I am kind of skeptical for it because it is not scientific proved.
But as far as I know, cupping usually will not cause serve problems. I decided to give it a try, because the worst situation would be no changes to my knee pain. And there is no much worse than my current situation. I searched online and found an acupuncturist in my area. I scheduled an appointment with him. It is the first time I scheduled an appointment. He asked me few questions about my past medical experiences and my knee situation. After discussion with him, he suggested me to do acupuncture. I refused because I am afraid of needles. He then suggested cupping treatments. I lie down on the electric massage table, he warms up my knee area by some relaxing massage. Then he put silicone cups on my knees. After about 10 minutes, he removed silicone cups. I didn’t have any feeling even I leave his clinic. He suggested me to purchase a silicone cupping set and repeat the treatment at home. I purchased a set since it only costs me 25 dollars.
After I back home, I continued running and doing cupping treatment every week. My knee pains reduced a lot after two weeks, and with accompanying of cupping treatments. I didn’t experience knee pains as often as before. At this point of time, I do believe that cupping is a magical treatment that could help with sports injuries. I recommend cupping therapy to many of my friends who are exercising a lot. Many of them start doing cupping at home regularly because they have experienced the magical effects of cupping. Right now, I do not care about whether cupping is scientific proved or not, as long as it is effective for me. I will continue to do cupping at home. If you are new to cupping, I suggest you look for a registered acupuncturist first to avoid misusing. In addition, I suggest purchase your cupping accessories at a reliable store. I purchased my silicone cupping sets at Lierre.ca. This silicone cupping set have last me very long time and the price is really good. They will have promotions on cupping sets sometimes. If you want to do cupping at joints, they also have plastic cupping sets which contain joins curved cups. All rights reserved for Lierre Blog.