I have always been interested in alternative treatment and trying out new things. I’ve been wanting to try out ‘blood cupping’ which draws out bad/unclean blood away from the body and I’ve been looking high and low for a centre that does this. It took me a trip to Cukai to discover that there is a centre that does it and it’s located in Ampang Park, a mere four miles away from home! So I headed there last Saturday and as I haven’t been there in ages, I spent some time trying to locate the centre.
Thankfully there were no other customers around when I got there. The lady in charge led me to a room and told me to shed off my clothes and lie facedown on the bed. She gave my back a light massage and said I need about 20 cups (each cup costs RM15). I asked how frequent I should have the treatment and she said ideally, we should go for cupping every three months (although later on she mentioned 120 days which should be four months) so I thought, why not and agreed to go for 20 cups.
She placed the cups on my back (they are smaller than the cups you get if you go for the normal fire cupping) and after a brief while, lifted the cups one by one and made some incisions on my back. It was quite ticklish in a slightly painful way but I endured them. This was when the bad blood started filling up the cups and according to her, it will also remove cholesterol, uric acid, wind, toxic etc from your body. You can do the cupping anywhere – on your back, calves, thighs, neck and even head. And because I suffer the occasional but painful leg cramp, I agreed for her to also cup my calves. That was when it started getting very painful – she said that the skin is thinner on the calves so that was probably why. It didn’t help when I finally asked what she used, to which she replied, ‘Razor blades.’ Somehow knowing this made the pain even more intense and I have low pain tolerance to begin with. After the bad blood had been drawn, she would remove each cup and then replace them again to ensure all bad blood had been drawn.
She told me that my shoulder blades were ‘swollen’ and that I have a lot of uric acid and cholesterol. ‘Even thin people can have cholesterol,’ she said knowingly. She asked if I eat crabs and squids often and I said no. In fact I told her I’m a semi-vegetarian (and I probably eat other seafood once a quarter if not less; while I do eat fish, it’s usually on a fortnight basis when I go back to the mothership). So how does a semi-vegetarian diet result in my body having high cholesterol and uric acid? How much cholesterol would Anthony Bourdain or Andrew Zimmern or those Biggest Loser contestants have in their bodies then? She also advised me not to eat nuts (I told her I don’t eat nuts anyway because they give me a lot of wind) or cold/iced water (and I told her I can never swallow cold or iced water ever since I was small).
All in all, it was a good albeit painful experience. I just wasn’t happy with how insistent she was about showing the bad blood the cups drew (I could do without any gory images OK and I’ve seen enough from the Internet) or how she quickly presumed that because I had a lot of bad blood drawn out, that my staple diet consists of crabs and squids and those unhealthy seafood, beans/nuts and cold water. Oh and I was still bleeding out a lot of blood even after she had tried to wipe it off me - even my blouse and trousers were stained. Fortunately I was persuaded to buy the healing gel to apply on the areas, a bit pricey though at RM20 but it works its magic.
Would I do it again? Yes – but not on my calves again. Would I go there again? I have no choice, unless I want to try out another centre at the outskirts of the city.
P.S. In the end, she put on 21 cups on my back and five on each of my calf. Add the gel and go figure. But well, I spend more on other things so why not on health?
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And more on health, I happened to tune in to a programme on NTV7 on the Saturday evening before last and a medical/health expert shared his knowledge on the vegetables and fruits that are good for us. So let me share them with you in turn. For vegetables, go for angled luffa, cucumber, spinach (red and green), radish and sweet potatoes. For fruits, go for apples and pears. So you now what to look out for when you next do grocery shopping.
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It was Wenger’s 800th game in charge on Saturday and Arsenal won a hard-fought match over the Brums which had Wilshere sent off in stoppage time for a stupid tackle which he and the gaffer admitted he deserved. The match also had me sitting at the edge of my seat fearing if the blue-clad Brums would equalise. Fellow Brummies WBA which beat Arsenal a fortnight back drew with ManUre (all with the help of ManUre with an Evra own goal and van de Sar doing a Flappyhandski) and Chelshit drawing away at Villa Park. After last night’s Blackpool-Man Sh*tty match though, we are back at third. And the other Blue-Red match last night saw Liverpool falling deeper in relegation zone after an uninspired display against Everton. Oh and Shrek has refused to sign new contract at Old Trafford.
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