It’s commonplace nowadays to go to a game and see the athletes covered in colerful tape on their arms and legs. You may have asked yourself what it is and does. This tape, called kinesiotape, was originally designed by a Chiropractor 40 years ago. This stretchy tape works by stimulating proprioception, which is the word for how your body knows where it is in space.
Your skin is filled with millions of receptors with different purposes, and many of them are dedicated to proprioception. Placing kinesiotape on a specific part of the body helps provide additional feedback to your brain. This additional input has been shown to help improve balance, movement patterns, and reduce pain.
It’s important to think of kinesiotape as more of a reminder for your brain rather than a brace. And while it does look pretty cool, it’s far more than a fashion statement. Here are some important things to remember about kinesiotape.
- Kinesiotape provides extra sensory information about how you move to your brain to reduce your risk of injury and augment rehabilitation
- Kinesiotape has been shown to help create improvements in balance that may last for up to 72 hours after it’s removed.
- Research shows that kinesiotaping may be more effective than postural exercises for reducing neck pain.
