Auricular acupuncture is an easy to perform intervention that may be of use for patients as a part of a larger multidisciplinary pain management pain strategy.

Cupping is a technique where a vacuum is created in a cup, drawing the skin and subcutaneous superficial fascia up into the cup. The use of cupping originated as early as 3000 B.C.E in a pre-scientific era and much of the reasoning once used to explain the effects do not make sense in the light of what we know today. In terms of clinical response to cupping, outcomes may be attributed to specific effects (affective touch, mechanical factors, and neurological factors), contextual effects (patient-therapist relationship, set and setting), and non-specific effects (natural history, regression to the mean).

The concept of sore spots that can be leveraged for therapeutic purposes have been independently discovered and used as a treatment for musculoskeletal pain by different cultures throughout the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia. One of the oldest examples on record is a 5,300 year old naturally preserved human body discovered in the Tyrolean Alps of Austria called Otzi “The Iceman”.