The Magic of KT Tape

One thing that people know about my sister is that she is prone to injury.  It is rare to see her playing a game without some sort of brace on her ankle or wrist or knee.  This past March, she tore her labrum, but it was misdiagnosed, so she did not have the proper surgery until July.  She had to go through intensive physical therapy, but now it’s volleyball season again, and she’s been cleared to play.  However, she has to take precautions to keep from injuring it further.  One of these precautions is wearing KT tape, otherwise known as the “magic tape.”

The first time I really remember KT tape appearing in a huge public setting was during the last Summer Olympics when many of the volleyball players had tape patterns twisting around their shoulders and knees.  No one really knew what it was at the time, but it is gaining popularity.  The KT Tape website describes it as “an elastic sports and fitness tape designed for muscle, ligament and tendon pain relief and support.”  It says that it is a fashionable, lightweight tape that provides external support and does not come off easily during physical activity.  The way it works is by creating “neuromuscular feedback (called proprioception) that inhibits (relaxes) or facilitates stronger firing of muscles and tendons.” Which is all very good, except that I, and I’m sure many others, don’t know what neuromuscular feedback is.

During our first week of classes, we discussed the fact that, despite what we learn in elementary school, there are more than five senses.  According to The London Orthotic Consultancy, proprioception, or neuromuscular feedback, is another one of those senses.  It is “the sense used by the body to determine the position of the other relative points of the body.”  The cells that work with proprioception are called proprioceptors, and the signals they send to the central nervous system help the body with balance, posture, and muscle contraction or relaxation.  Apparently, they are “very sensitive to stimulation and have an effect on muscle tension.”

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KT Tape explains that, depending on how the tape is applied, it will either support, enable, or restrict soft tissue, and its movement.  The tape is designed to have the same elasticity as skin, and, as it moves, it “augments tissue function and distributes loads away from inflamed or damaged muscles and tendons, thereby protecting tissues from further injury.”

The US National Library of Medicine (NLM) collected the conclusions of a series of six studies.  Five of these studies found that KT Tape helps to significantly decrease short term pain but has little effect in the long run, while the sixth found no significant improvement in pain levels coinciding with the use of KT Tape.

However, this information comes from the company that makes KT Tape, so there is a bias in that the company wants people to buy it so that they make money.  While many people buy totally into the idea, others are convinced that it’s just a placebo effect, people are just imagining the “magic” of KT tape.

The University of Franca did a study on this placebo effect by taping elderly people and measuring their ability to balance.  Part of the group had KT Tape, while the other part had a placebo tape, and their ability to balance was measured right after being taped and 48 hours after being taped.  This study, however, was terminated before it came to a conclusion.  As NLM stated, “There are few high-quality studies examining the use of KT following musculoskeletal injury.”

An article by Andrew Griffiths in The Telegraph talked to some scientists dedicated to researching the effects of KT Tape.  The results that Dr. Michael Callaghan and Roger Kerry found were that it is, indeed effective- but taping in general is effective.  From their studies, they had not found any evidence that KT Tape is scientifically better than any other tape.

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As KT Tape’s popularity continues to spread among athletes, many people claim that it’s a fad, a myth, magic.  But there does appear to be a scientific explanation behind it.  And while there is no proof that KT Tape is better than any other form of taping and may just be a placebo effect, there seems to be no harm in improved performances based off of a fun, fashionable, and interesting tape that makes people perform better.

 

 

 

 

One thought on “The Magic of KT Tape

  1. Nicolette Lynn Brown

    This really interested me because I know I am also prone to injury during sports. I never had to use KT Tape but I have noticed it on a lot of athletes. Based off of the study in the Telegraph, it sounds like the tape is just as good as regular sports tape, and its the marketing that works. Having professional athletes wear it gets other people to wear it, which helps the company. And the bias information coming from the company backs up that the marketing is done well. I feel like this might become another fad like how the titanium necklaces baseball players wear are perceived.

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