Blood cupping

What is blood cupping?

Blood cupping is placing suction cups over small scratches or pricks in the skin, so that blood is drawn into the cup. Outside BDSM the same technique goes by wet cupping or hijama. It pairs the suction of ordinary cupping with blood play, which is why sterile work is required.

What blood cupping does to the skin

With ordinary, dry cupping the skin stays intact. The encyclopedic description explains that a cup usually stays in place for five to fifteen minutes and that the suction pulls small bleeds under the skin, visible as pinpoint bleeds (petechiae) and purple discoloration (purpura). That is the round dark mark where the cup stood.

The wet variant adds opened skin to that. The same overview lists, as local side effects, scarring, burns, linear bruises or streaks with wet cupping, and skin ulcers, and it notes that lasting discoloration and infections are among the possible outcomes. It adds that a theoretical risk of infection exists.

That word “theoretical” deserves a note in this context. Reviewing 308 reported adverse events from acupuncture, moxibustion, and cupping in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Xu and colleagues found that infections were the leading complication, and that clean-technique guidelines have to be followed to keep them down.

What to watch for

The discoloration is normal, the scar is not. Round dark marks that stay for one to two weeks come with the technique. A spot that turns more painful after a few days, thicker or warmer, does not.

In practice: use cups and lancets that come sterile-packed and single-use, wear gloves, and put no cup on a spot where the skin is thin or where you have worked before. If you are new to this, you do not start with the wet variant. When I bring this into a BDSM date, sterile single-use gear is not a choice, it is the rule.

Sources

• Cupping therapy. Wikipedia. Provides the usual duration of five to fifteen minutes, the names for the skin effects as petechiae and purpura, and the local side effects: scarring, burns, linear bruises or streaks with wet cupping, skin ulcers, lasting discoloration, and a theoretical risk of infection.
• Adverse Events of Acupuncture: A Systematic Review of Case Reports. Xu, Wang, Cooper et al., Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2013, article 581203. A review of 308 reported adverse events from cupping among other techniques; provides the finding that infections are the leading complication.

Related terms

• Blood play. The umbrella term, with the STD-status conversation that belongs with it and the cleanup afterward.
• Fire cupping. The method where a flame makes the vacuum, with its own risk profile.
• Cupping, cutting, and IV needles are the other close neighbors.