What is That Weird Colorful Tape?

​At Vallejo Chiropractic, we are now offering Kinesiology Taping or “K-Taping” to our clients. Some of you may have seen this colorful taping at the Olympics where athletes of almost every sport are wearing it. It is also very popular at the CrossFit games, where the participants are looking for extra support as they are lifting. 

Dr. Kunsman, Dr. Zack, Beau and Shanon took a seminar to see how we could apply this method to our patients at Vallejo Chiropractic. It turns out that taping has a huge value for rehabilitating our patients and can help relieve pain as they progress through care. 

We believe that movement is a key factor to getting you better. K-Taping allows us to have another tool to help you get back in action.

When you have an injury to an area, the body’s tissues get compressed down and almost glued together. This compression is a reaction to prevent more immediate damage, but it slows the healing process. K-Taping takes skin and muscle tissue that has been adheased together and lifts it; allowing for more circulation. You can place the tape over a bruise and it will heal faster than without it. 
K-Taping also brings more neurological attention to the area of your injury. Having the tape on your skin causes the brain to send more signals to where the tape is. Touch is very powerful, and if you have something like Kinesiology Tape constantly in contact with the skin and moving with it, more feedback will be provided to the brain than without it.

​Sometimes we use Kinesiology taping to help your adjustments hold better. If there is a stubborn vertebra that doesn’t want to stay in place, we may throw some supportive tape on there to help you get better faster. 

How is K-Taping different than the classic white athletic tape? 

K-Tape is designed to support a person without limiting their movement too much. White athletic tape is designed to stiffen a joint and greatly reduce range of motion. During the rehabilitation process movement is a huge part of getting a person back to the shape they want to be in. We would white tape someone during a game so they could score the winning touchdown without too much pain but we would K-Tape them once the game is over to get them ready for next week.

The same tape that is used on elite athletes can be used to help you recover faster from injury. We can modify how the tape is applied to get you ready for the next sporting event, better recover from a car accident or surgery, or even help you stabilize an area that just won’t seem to get better.  ​