The Effects of Cupping Therapy on Reducing Fatigue of Upper Extremity Muscles—A Pilot Study Chien-Liang Chen 1 , Chi-Wen Lung 2 , Yih-Kuen Jan 3,4,5 , Ben-Yi Liau 6 , and Jing-Shia Tang 7,8(&) 1 Department of Physical Therapy, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan chencl@isu.edu.tw 2 Department of Creative Product Design, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan 3 Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA 4 Kinesiology and Community Health, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA 5 Computational Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA 6 Biomedical Engineering, Hungkuang University, Taichung, Taiwan 7 Department of Nursing, Chung-Hwa University of Medical Technology, Tainan, Taiwan tangjeanine@yahoo.com.tw 8 Institute of Allied Health Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan Abstract. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of the cupping therapy on the muscles and autonomic nervous system. Five healthy participants were recruited for the arm cranking tests. The protocols include a 1 st 12-min bout, 20-min recovery, and 2 nd 12-min bout. The cupping therapy (negative pressure of 300–450 mmHg on the upper back and shoulder muscles) was applied during the recovery period of experimental trials. The median frequency (MDF) of electromyographic signals and the heart rate variability (HRV) were used to objectively quantify the degree of muscle fatigue and cardiovascular regulations. The repeated measures ANOVA was applied to determine the differences. Our results showed that MDF was significantly higher in the experimental trials but the HRV was not significantly different between the experimental and control trials. Our study indicates that the role of cupping therapy may reduce muscle fatigue but do not alter the cardiorespiratory controls. Keywords: Dry cupping Á Fatigue recovery Á Electromyogram Á Heart rate variability Á Oxygen consumption Á Rating of perceived exertion © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 T. Ahram (ed.), Advances in Human Factors in Sports, Injury Prevention and Outdoor Recreation, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 603, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60822-8_7