For the last 25 years, Kinesio Taping has been breaking new ground in the fields of sports performance, pain management and sports injury rehabilitation.
The word “kinesio” means movement. Kinesio Taping is a way to support and protect joints while allowing or enhancing their movement. Movement is necessary to the healing process because movement fires neural pathways that force your brain to respond. When a joint is immobilized in a sling or brace, these neural pathways are not fired and the joint and surrounding tissues begin to atrophy. Sometimes, immobilization is necessary for broken bones to have time to reunite. In most other cases that do not involve a broken bone, the joint should not be immobilized because the tissues around the joint need to be used so that they do not atrophy, and the injury can heal properly. Kenisio taping can be extremely useful in these situations, because practitioners can apply the tape in such a way that allows relatively normal range of motion, while limiting extreme ranges of motion that may re-injure tissues.
Kinesio Taping can also help promote the movement of fluid, which can rapidly increase the time it takes to rehab an injury. When the tape is applied along the body’s natural drainage channels, it can cause pressure gradients because of the way it causes the adjacent skin to ripple. These pressure gradients force fluid (swelling) to drain away from the effected area.
