Broke a rib in last RR of the year this past weekend and am looking to see what experiences people have had with using kinesiology tape. I know that there is no real cure for this except for time and patience.
Thanks for any input.
I have used it with torn calf muscle and it is great, saved a marathon. Works great for relieving pain of torn muscle tissue, not sure it works with broken bones?
I’m not sold on it. Seems like just more pseudoscience of the type that permeates the sport. I remember reading an article recently that referenced a study showing that it had no measurable effects.
Worked great for my achilles injury, once it was applied correctly. Can’t explain it and don’t care to, all I know is it worked 100% as advertised for THAT particular problem. No tape = painful run. Applied the tape = no pain at all, used it for 3 weeks of rehab running and then didn’t need it anymore.
A rare occurrence of shin splints? Didn’t work at all. I could detect NO difference in feeling or normal healing time.
Can’t imagine it would do anything for a broken rib…but then again, I’m just “street smart” not “college smart”
Seeing more and more of this going on.
Serious question - does it work and how does it work? I am very open minded to learn.
Could I not get the same effect using hockey tape or duct tape? - I have looked at the Kinesio Tape and it looks all the world like fancy Hockey tape.
Looking to be enlightened.
Have used Kinesiotaping for nearly a decade on various conditions, and I don’t believe there would be any benefit in your case. Taping for broken ribs requires much more restrictive applications that Kinesiotaping just can’t match. Kinesiotaping is primarily for soft tissue (muscles, tendons, etc) and I have seen very good results with proper application.
I would love to see the article gbot is citing as it is new information to me.
I broke a rib during a race in April and nothing helped other than Vicodin and patience. The doc I saw said they no longer wrap or tape because it doesn’t help because you can’t immobilize a rib.
I wasn’t back to my full running schedule for 4 weeks and the pain wasn’t completely gone for about 8.
I don’t wish a broken rib on anyone.
My thread on this topic: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=2785671;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;
as i understand it, taping or wrapping a broken rib is counter indicated, because it restricts ventilation. tidal volume decreases, the actions of coughing and sneezing are mitigated, so, pain is decreased, but, this is how you exhaust or eliminate pathogens. wrapping ribs used to be the typical treatment, but, this was attended by increased incidence of pneumonia. so, grin and bear it. percocet is my recommended cure. that, and 3 to 8 weeks.
at least, this is my understanding.
Fleck, I’ll be at the Kona Expo with SpiderTech, which makes Kinesio tape applications. Stop by and I’ll introduce you to Dr. Jardine, who can give you all the explanation you’d like (this offer is open to anyone headed to Kona). For the time being, below is a Wiki on it. Hockey tape is not the same thing. The concept of Kinesio is to support normal muscle function/movement, not inhibit it like most other tapes and wraps do.
I’ll add this: scientific proof or not, it’s being widely adopted in the pro peloton, including HTC, BMC and a number if individual riders (Lance among them), as well as pro and amateur triathletes (Joe Gambles, who won IM Moo, wears it religiously). Recently Simon Whitfield and George Hincapie both summoned Dr. Jardine to assist with injury treatment.
**Elastic therapeutic tape is a cotton strip with an acrylic adhesive that is used for treating athletic injuries and a variety of physical disorders. It was invented by Dr. Kenzo Kase, a Japanese chiropractor, in the 1970s. Kinesio Tex tape is a variety of therapeutic tape sold by Kinesio Holding Company.
For the first decade after its introduction, orthopedists, chiropractors, acupuncturists and other medical practitioners in Japan were the main users of the theraputic tape. During the second decade after its introduction the tape was adopted by Japanese Olympic and professional athletes. Today Kinesio tapes are used by medical practitioners and athletes in Japan, the United States, Europe, South America, Australia, Asia.The tape is used in therapy to relax overused muscles and in rehabilitation to facilitate underused muscles. Advocates claim that the wave pattern found on the tape’s adhesive has a lifting effect on the skin which can reduce swelling and inflammation by improving circulation and reduce pain by taking pressure off pain receptors.
scientific proof or not, it’s being widely adopted in the pro peloton, including HTC, BMC and a number if individual riders (Lance among them), as well as pro and amateur triathletes (Joe Gambles, who won IM Moo, wears it religiously). Recently Simon Whitfield and George Hincapie both summoned Dr. Jardine to assist with injury treatment.
This is what I specifically have a problem with.
It seems to skirt very closely to the ‘Argument from Authority’ fallacy. Without scientific backing, anecdotal evidence isn’t worth much, especially when you’re talking about injury prevention or rehabilitation. I could tape a magnet to my forehead and go ride my bike for a month, and if I didn’t get injured, I could say that taping a magnet to your head prevents injury. Likewise, if I were already injured and I did the same, when I healed I could say ‘look, the magnet healed me’. Unfortunately without the magnet I may not have gotten injured, and without the magnet I likely would have healed naturally. When a technique or product is used and it doesn’t work, that very rarely is used as proof that it’s ineffective - instead the case is just considered ‘stubborn’ or ‘more time is required’. It’s a win-win for any purveyor of pseudoscience. There is no way their product can be discredited if we aren’t demanding scientific proof of its effectiveness.
Athletes often reach out for various treatments in desperation. Being injured sucks. Therefore pretty much any semi-plausible technique for injury prevention or rehabilitation is going to appeal to a large segment of the population. For a top level athlete, they are likely seeing some sort of professional anyway, so if said pro whips out some new product or treatment and says ‘lets try this’ there is basically no reason for them to say no unless it’s obviously harmful, which most of these therapies are not.
And finally you very rarely see any of these treatments or products used in isolation. If a chiro did ART on me and then applied kinesio tape and I got better, was it the ART or the kinesio tape or both or neither? There’s absolutely no way to know. The practitioner generally has a lot of incentive to say it’s both, or at the very least say they both likely played a role.
This is why anecdotal evidence means nothing in these sorts of cases. If all a therapy or product’s supporters can produce to support their case is anecdotal evidence, the red flag needs to go up. Anecdotal evidence is at best third-rate and by itself isn’t worth anything.
There haven’t been many studies but the ones that have been done seem to be very reserved in their endorsement of this therapy. From http://www.trekraceteam.com/2010/06/spidertech-tape-on-peter-and-article.html :
“There’s no evidence of a long-term or medium-term clinically significant effect,” says George Theodore, Massachusetts General Hospital surgeon and team physician for the Boston Red Sox, However, he says, kinesiology taping “is not harmful and over the short term it can have a beneficial effect” on pain and range of motion. It isn’t clear if the effect is psychological, he adds.
"Two recent studies on Kinesio Tex showed some short-term effect. A study of 42 patients with shoulder pain, published in 2008 in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, found that range of motion improved immediately after application of kinesiology tape, compared with a sham taping using no tension. But the study found no significant difference in pain or overall disability scores.
Last year, a study on 41 patients with whiplash after car accidents found statistically significant pain relief and improvements in range of motion with kinesiology taping compared with a sham tape. The effects were seen immediately and continued a day later. In the paper, published last year in the same journal, the Spanish-led research team said the changes were so small they “may not be clinically meaningful.” Kinesio Holding, which didn’t fund either study, says a limitation of the shoulder study is that the kinesiology taping wasn’t customized to each patient’s injury."
Hardly convincing IMO. The open acceptance of pseudoscience in the endurance sports community is a bit of a pet peeve of mine and this seems like more of the same. Develop a product, then try to invent a reason why it works. Then find people that agree with you. That’s not science.
praise science, gbot
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I can’t imagine how any sort of tape - be it the latest fad or Scotch tape would be beneficial to a cracked rib.
I do, however, wish that I had invented/invested in Kinesio back in say in 2007… All that press they got from the Olympic footage showing their product used by wold class athletes really catapulted them from “another health product trying to make it” to this market perception of almost magical proportions.
Torn soleus? KINESIO Tape it!
Strained rotator cuff? I bet you could KINESIO tape that bad boy and still pitch a complete game.
ED? KINESIO Tape that mofo and she’ll still be screaming your name the next morning!
This seems to be the best study that’s been done:
From their results:
Our results are partially consistent with previous reports showing that KT can have a positive effect on ROM when thought to be limited by musculoskeletal shoulder pain. The immediate statistically significant difference between groups no longer existed by day 3. These findings may indicate that the potential benefits of KT application are limited to partially improving pain-free ROM of shoulder abduction immediately after application. No short- or long-term benefit related to pain or function occurred over the 6-day period of tape application… * The physiological mechanisms by which KT is presumed to work remain hypothetical, and we can only speculate what they might be…* * Pain and disability measures, as a result of taping, were not different between groups in our study. This is in contrast with other published literature using similar outcome measures. This lack of agreement could be due to a number of factors. Although the 2 previous studies were also short term, they were both case series and had no control group, making it difficult to ascertain causation. *
Again, not very convincing at all.
Well, you said it yourself: there haven’t been many studies done, so while you can say there’s no evidence to support it does work the converse is also true. The same can be said for chiro, ART, massage, and other therapies. If you need proof you likely won’t find many instances of isolated use since most people view kinesio as a therapeutic tool that’s part of a range of treatments.
Look, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. The product’s use and adoption by noted athletes and practitioners is well documented. True, that isn’t scientific proof, so people need to decide on the merit of athletes freely choosing to use a product while riding the TdF, racing a triathlon or setting a world record on the track. Fleck inquired about it and I offered to introduce him to someone that can answer questions, so that Fleck can decide if he wants to try it or not. Simple as that. If you want to find out for yourself then the offer is open.
Hmmm. I’ve broken ribs on both sides. Nothing but time helped.
Do I really have to explain how lame the “you can’t prove it doesn’t work” justification is? If you read the study I referenced, the fact that there was no statistical difference from the sham taping is actually pretty good evidence that it doesn’t work.
I’m not going to be in Kona so unfortunately I won’t be able to take you up on your offer, and even if I were, some sort of explanation that can’t be given over the internet probably isn’t worth much.
As I said above, this product very closely fits the archetypal pseudoscientific treatment - something that was invented based on nothing except perhaps a hunch, with the ‘how and why it works’ a pure hypothetical dreamed up after the fact. That’s backwards. 99 times out of 100, real science-based treatment is developed the other way around where a known scientific fact or approach is leveraged and engineered into a product.
“We think it works because of such and such a principle” is transparent code speak for “we’re not sure it actually works at all but we’d like you to buy it”.
If you’re interested at all in convincing me and other skeptics, this is how you do it: find someone who isn’t making money from it, isn’t sponsored by it, and hasn’t SPENT money on it to explain the concept behind it and, how and why it works in physiological terms. That would be a great start.
As far as the “top level athletes use it” - that’s just proof that it probably isn’t harmful. Which I think is likely true. You could probably cover yourself head to toe with the stuff and be OK, it’s just freaking tape after all.
It’s no less lame than someone proclaiming something doesn’t work because there isn’t a body of scientific proof. But again, don’t try it if you’re convinced it won’t work.
Just curious: in another thread you said you’re going to incorporate the workouts the OP did to lift his ftp. So one person’s outcome is good enough for you to not only believe it but incorporate into your regimen? That poster’s 20 min power is what I ride at LE (or would average for a 4+ hour training ride), and not how I’d train for what he wanted to accomplish. Should those n=1s justify his method vs mine?
It’s no less lame than someone proclaiming something doesn’t work because there isn’t a body of scientific proof. But again, don’t try it if you’re convinced it won’t work.
Just curious: in another thread you said you’re going to incorporate the workouts the OP did to lift his ftp. So one person’s outcome is good enough for you to not only believe it but incorporate into your regimen? That poster’s 20 min power is what I ride at LE (or would average for a 4+ hour training ride), and not how I’d train for what he wanted to accomplish. Should those n=1s justify his method vs mine?
So… you’d ride at 95% of FTP for a 4 hour training ride? That doesn’t make much sense, maybe you need to re-test.
Anyway, the difference is that he’s not trying to sell me anything. I’ll try his method to see if it works for me. That’s the great thing about a powermeter - I can do it for a few weeks and then see definitively if it’s made a difference vs. other approaches I’ve tried in the past.
There is no such definitive test for these sorts of treatments. The science behind training with power is very well documented and supported.
I’m not saying 100% it doesn’t work. It very well may work. All I’m saying is that it very conveniently fits the profile of pseudoscience to a T and I’m not willing to fork out my money for that kind of thing without knowing that it actually does work. And it annoys me that people are so credulous about that kind of stuff.
Thank you for all the responses and personal experiences. The silver lining is that it was the last race of the season but was looking forward to get my running legs going now that the season is over and not sure how that is going to go now.
Time & patience it is. Again, I appreciate all the responses.
I tried SpiderTech taping recently and had instant results with my hamstrings.
I’ll have Spiders on at Kona even if they do mess with my tan!