The Use of Kinesiotape in Chiropractic Care

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. Steve Minors of Rehab Effects here in Austin, Texas. Today we'll be discussing Kinesio tape. Kinesio tape has been around for two, three decades. It originated in the east and made it's way over here and it really does help when patients present with problems relating to pain, inflammation, joint instability. Lance Armstrong, in his book "Every Second Counts" discusses it on pages one hundred ninety and one hundred ninety one. And he's referring to the chiropractor that they had with them during the Tour de France for approximately seven years. But Jeff had something that was better than any laser, wrap or electric massager. He had the tape. It was a special hot pink, athletic tape that came from Japan and seemed to have special powers. George, as in George Hintappy, one of the writers. George got a problem with his lower back. Jeff turned him around and started putting hot pink tape on it. George thought, how can that help? But the next day the pain had disappeared. It was gone. The pink tape worked so we kept it because it could fix things. It could seriously fix things. Kinesio tape is a cotton, acrylic blend and on the adhesive side it almost mimics your skin. So when you lay it down on the skin and just with a very light stretch, essentially what you're doing is, you're lifting some of the layers of the skin and allowing the inflammation to pass or lymphatic drainage. If there is a suspicion of joint instability such as, let's say, unstable joint or unstable shoulder joint or knee, then you would use the Kinesio tape slightly differently but to some degree the same philosophy applies."