My husband's recent experience of Hijama (Cupping) Therapy

After the last post which was a written interview with a hijama therapist, below is a written interview about a patient of hijama therapy... and a short introduction to a hijama therapist specialising in pain! :

"My husband's recent experience of Hijama (Cupping) Therapy". - By Ameela Farooq from West Yorkshire

What condition does your husband suffer from?

My husband suffers from headache, shoulder and neck pain and a condition called tinnitus.

Where do you live and where did you go for the hijama therapy?

My husband and I live in West Yorkshire and went to Birmingham to see Dr Nagi - we have been twice now.

What did the treatment involve?

Dr Nagi recommended cupping on the top of the head and shoulder area. I was quite surprised at just how little blood came from the shoulder area, and it seemed very thin? However, on the head, quite a lot of congealed blood came out.

What was the result?

My husband felt relief on the head, the headaches went for maybe 5 weeks and then seemed to return. The tinnitus which is gushing sounds in the ear, its actually something to do with the circulation of blood, really didn't improve. Dr. Nagi did say when we left that, he expected the headaches to stop and the noise to improve. Fortunately the headaches did stop but the tinnitus remained. Really there has been no difference in regards to the neck or shoulder area, the pain did not decrease.

What was your overall impression of the therapist and his practice?

Dr Nagi is a helpful and pleasant person, but very busy and appointments are limited. Hygiene was excellent, and he has a nice consultation room. He is very specific regarding what type of hijamah he does, which is basically, the top of the head and shoulder, which is what my husband needed.

How long did the treatment last and how much did it cost?

The initial appointment lasted about 2 hours and the second appointment about 15 minutes. The charge is £30.00.

Overall impression of the therapy?

It has been a beneficial experience, but we are hoping to find someone more local. It was quite a long day driving from West Yorkshire to Birmingham.

Our thanks to Ameela Farooq for sharing her experience of hijama therapy. If you have had hijama done, please share your experience (whether positive or negative!) via a comment* below, thanks .

If you suffer from headache, neck or shoulder pain and want advice or want to arrange treatment, please see below a short introduction from Dr Hussein Nagi in Birmingham together with his contact details
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FEATURED HIJAMA THERAPIST: Dr Hussein Nagi

LOCATION
My address in Birmingham is Linthurst Rd, Blackwell. Bromsgrove B60 1QH, about 45 minutes from Leicester on M42 exit 2.
EXPERIENCE
I have been practicing Hijama for 5 years.
SPECIALTY
I do cupping therapy only for chronic pain e.g. low backache, headache, migraine, whiplash etc as this is my specialty.

Dr Hussein Nagi
Pain Management consultant
City Hospital
Birmingham
hnagi11@hotmail.com
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PS:Remember, if you want to automatically receive alerts of updates to this blog, please fill your email details above (if you haven't already done so).

PPS: If you are a hijama therapist or patient who wants to share your knowledge or experience via a guest blog-post, please send me an email to: hijama.mail@gmail.com.

*Comments are moderated to prevent spamming so may take some time to appear

"A Brief Introduction to Cupping Therapy (Hijama) by a practicing therapist..."

This is a guest-post in the form of a written interview by Umm Husamuddin - a female cupping therapist based in Manchester, England.

What particular illnesses/ conditions (if any), do you specialise / had the most experience in?

"I have treated a wide variety of conditions; however, as the majority of my patients are female (with the exception of male relatives) a lot of patients come to me with menstrual disorders and hormonal imbalances. The other ailments that I frequently treat are back pain, joint pains, sciatica, and general health maintenance."

And do you find that in your experience, the conditions/illnesses that you have come across respond well to cupping (hijama) therapy? And if so, what are they?

"The conditions which in my experience have shown immediate benefit from hijama are back and joint pain (including arthritis, lower back pain, muscular fibrosis/fibromyalgia, spondylosis), sciatica, and high blood pressure. Most illnesses will respond well to hijama, but each individual patient is unique, as is each different ailment, therefore some people will feel the effects more quickly than others."

Also what would you say about using cupping as a general preventative therapy (which by getting rid of bad blood/ toxins in the body may help prevent conditions like high cholesterol/ heart disease / cancer in the long term)? And how often would you recommend this (once a month? once/twice a year?)

"Cupping / Hijama is most certainly beneficial as a preventative therapy. It promotes healing within the body and assists in the removal of metabolic waste products and toxins in the body. It also greatly improves the immune system, making the body less prone to disease and reduces the risk of blood clots and serious illnesses such as cancers. Therefore, even if a person has no ailments, they should still have hijama."

"For general health maintenance, cupping should be performed at least once a year, preferably 4 times a year; once a month is best for young people and once every other month for the elderly. Dry and massage cupping can be performed on a daily basis by the individual, in addition to the monthly wet cupping which should be performed by a trained hijama therapist."

Our thanks to Cupping Therapist Umm Husamuddin who can be contacted for more information by leaving a comment* below as well as via email to hijamatherapy@hotmail.co.uk for hijama (cupping) therapy for female patients in and around the Manchester area.

BRIEF EXPLANATION OF SOME OF THE TERMS WHICH MAY BE UNFAMILIAR TO OUR READERS:

Hijama: Hijama (or its variations hijamah, hijaamah or hijaama) is the Arabic word for "cupping therapy", hence both terms are used interchangeably in the above post.
Sciatica: An old word which means leg pain from a pinched nerve. This is usually distinguished from lumbago, another old word which refers to back pain. - http://www.neurosurgical.com
Arthritis: a group of conditions involving damage to the joints of the body. Arthritis is the leading cause of disability in people older than fifty-five years - http://en.wikipedia.org
Fibromyalgia: A chronic disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, and tenderness in localized areas of the neck, spine, shoulders, and hips called "tender points - http://www.arthritis-guide.com
Spondylosis: a degenerative disease in which the vertebral joints of the spine become stiff and then fused - en.wiktionary.org
High blood pressure: A condition in which the blood circulates through the arteries with too much force - www.cure4diabetes.org

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PS: Next time, I am hoping to share a post entitled "My husband's recent experience of Hijama Therapy", which as the title suggests, is someone who tried hijama therapy as a treatment for her husband's chronic headache, neck and back pain. Remember, if you want to automatically receive alerts of updates to this blog, please fill your email details above (if you haven't already done so).

PPS: If you are a hijama therapist or patient who wants to share your knowledge or experience via a guest blog-post, please send me an email to: hijama.mail@gmail.com.

*Comments are moderated to prevent spamming so may take some time to appear

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The Two (no Three!) Main Reasons to have Hijama (Cupping) Therapy!

... And announcing a new online resource for the therapy!

From my limited understanding over these past 3-4 years, I have now gathered that there are at least 2 very different reasons which Hijama therapy is used for:

1)- Detox
* Preventative therapy.
* Removes bad blood, potential carcinogens, toxins, waste products and other "bad guys", and as a result:
* Gets rid of Lethargy, loss of stamina etc.

2)- Treating Specific Illnesses / Conditions
* Migraine
* Asthma / Eczema
* Acne / Boils etc

Well a quick search on the internet brought me to a webpage which actually includes a third use (obvious really but I just saw it as part of 2 above, but really it classes as a separate use if you think about it):

3)- Pain-relief
* Back-pain
* Neck-pain etc.


NEW ONLINE RESOURCE:
The site I got this from is actually a newly relaunched website of Dr Munir Ravalia called www.zhijama.co.uk and the page under discussion is called "Why have Hijama?".

So you now have this excellent resource online with tonnes of information and you can even contact Dr Ravalia (who is a subscriber to this blog and hopefully a guest-blogger shortly), by email or phone for further information.

Comparing this with Acupuncture, the related therapy which we looked at in the last post, well acupuncture is probably also just as useful for treating specific conditions and relieving pain (2 and 3), however I think hijama is unique in the sense that it is the only alternative therapy (that I know so far, but I may of course be wrong!) that can also be called a detox, and not only that, I would go even as far as saying it's "The Fastest Most-Direct Detox Known to Humankind!"

So, as a blogsite dedicated to finding out all there is to know about cupping, I have now refined my quest for information about hijamah along these three branches based on the above uses for the therapy (if you know of any other categories of use, please leave a comment):

1) General Preventative Annual Detox (if I can describe it like that!):
How often should this be done and what benefits are expected? From an Islamic viewpoint, I understand this can be done at least once or twice a year (bit like a car's service really - every 6 months or 6000 miles!).

As far as the results are concerned: Does it remove/reduce bad blood, potential carcinogens, toxins, pesticides, waste products, cholesterol and other "bad guys"? If you are a therapist who can enlighten us about this particular aspect, please do so via a comment*, as with the ever-increasing toxins & carcinogens that are supposedly in our food and environment, I'm sure a lot of people out there would be grateful to learn of an effective detox therapy.

2) Treating Specific Illnesses:
Anecdotal evidence (which in plain English means: stories reported by people!) exists which seems to suggest that hijama therapy has been effective in treating many different diseases and conditions, including but not limited to : Asthma, Eczema, High Blood Pressure, Migraine etc.

If you are a therapist or a patient who can share your knowledge about this, again please do so via a comment*, as once again, we as cupping enthusiasts would want to know it's success stories (ie which illnesses can be treated), as well as its limitations (ie which conditions can't be treated).

3) Pain-Relief:
Again there are reports of people treated for back-pain, neck-pain etc which is not necessarily from an illness but maybe from a fall, twist, sprain or trapped-nerve.

Again if you as a therapist or a patient have had experience in this category please share it with a comment*.

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Finally if you are someone who has a condition, illness or pain and you want to know if it can be treated by cupping therapy, then please leave your question, again via a comment* and hopefully one of the handful of hijama therapists who are now subscribers to this blog will answer it for you.

Thank you for your help and I wish you tonnes of ££health, which is the ultimate $$wealth!

Shuaib

PS: Remember, if you want to automatically receive alerts of updates to this blog, please fill your email details above (if you haven't already done so).

PPS: If you are a hijama therapist or patient who wants to share your knowledge or experience via a guest blog-post, please send me an email to: hijama.mail@gmail.com. Also note first guest-post "Introduction to Hijama by a Practicing Therapist" is slightly delayed (my apologies) but expected shortly.

*Comments are moderated to prevent spamming so may take some time to appear

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