10 Most Mind Numbingly Stupid Alternative Medicines

2. Cupping Therapy

Cupping is an ancient treatment that began as a method for blood letting. Just to put this in perspective from the beginning, bloodletting therapy is based on some Ancient Greek and medieval ideas about balancing the body's four humours in order to cure diseases. You sharp-minded folks out there will have noticed that this has no real basis in modern medicine whatsoever.

Anyway, the treatment comes in many different forms but generally involves creating a vacuum inside a small glass jar and suctioning it onto the skin. The treatment can be used to treat a wide variety of conditions (always a bit of a warning sign in itself) including musculoskeletal conditions, cancer (alternative medicine loves curing cancer) and even gynaecological disorders.

More often that not, however, practitioners are content to simply go with the idea of promoting general "wellness" and "healing" without going into too many details.

In a practice known as "wet cupping" the skin is actually sliced open before the cup is suctioned over the top of it. This sucks blood out of the wound, filling the cup and supposedly drawing out "impurities" from the blood. How the cup can tell good blood from bad blood, it isn't clear, but basically, this is simply medieval blood letting in its modern form and does literally nothing. Bearing in mind that blood letting is what killed Lord Byron, approach with extrem caution.

Whilst it probably won't cause you any serious damage aside from burning, bruising and minor blood loss, it certainly won't cure you of cancer. It might, however, stop you from seeking proper medical attention for your ailments, which will cause you harm in the long run.