Question Everything, Especially What You Read

If there’s one consistent takeaway from my continuing education journey, it’s how little we actually know about the body.  Sometimes it’s extremely frustrating to spend so much time learning yet come out with LESS answers than before I started.  But other times I come to realize how liberating that actually is—more on why that is in a future post. 

However, the more I understand how little we know, the more shocked I am by the false claims of the health and wellness industry—an industry that continues to feed the public a very reductionistic, one-method-cures-all, solution to all our aches and pains.  This post is more detailed than the average reader probably cares for.  But it’s a glimpse into the world of a deceptive, money hungry, fad-based industry that prays on our ignorance to gain wealth.  And it infuriates me.  Skim through, just to have an idea of why you shouldn’t believe everything you read (and you don’t have to believe this post either!) Be a healthy skeptic. About everything.

I’m an Equinox member and receive weekly emails from Furthermore, their online publication.  Headlines range from the newest detox methods to strength training tips.  Most of it is very surface level and I barely skim them before deleting.  Two weeks ago, the headline of the email was, “Are You Using Kinesiology Tape?”  I’d thought there wasn’t much definitive evidence about the use of KT Tape, so I was curious what the article had to say about it.  I was shocked at the claims.

KT Tape (a brand of Kinesiology Tape) is an elastic adhesive strip “designed to relieve pain while supporting muscles, tendons, and ligaments,” stated on the official KT Tape website.  You know, the big pieces of tape you see athletes wear in the Olympics?  According to the KT Tape website, re-worded in the Furthermore article in my email, and also what you’ll find if you Google search it, KT Tape: pulls your skin when applied around an injury in such a way that relieves the fluid build up from your inflamed tissue. This allows the fluid to move freely, increases blood circulation, and relieves pressure on your muscles caused by the fluid build up. This also somehow helps increase your muscles’ ability to activate.  The KT Tape website has a pretty clear asterisk indicating that none of this is clinically proven.  The Furthermore blog post I was sent does not.  What got me fired up was the additional unsupported claims in the article such as, KT Tape will:

Open your shoulders to improve your posture.

Restore mobility where scars limit it.

Find and activate smaller stabilizing muscles.

. . . among some other things. To sum it up, “It’s like putting a therapist in your back pocket for several days,” according to one Equinox massage therapist interviewed for the piece.

Open your shoulders for better posture.
The article describes the effects of rounded posture on our back muscles: “Think of a rubber band,” aforementioned massage therapist says. “Pull it in opposite directions and the band will tighten as it tries to snap back to its natural position. In the same way, stretched muscles often spasm and lead to knots.”

Leaving the posture conversation aside, I’ll just address the rubber band analogy.  Our soft connective tissue—like the tissue that makes up the bulk of what we call muscle—does have elastic qualities like a rubber band, but it ALSO has viscous qualities like honey. That makes our muscle tissue actually viscoelastic like a gummy worm. I don’t think it even requires tissue mechanics for us to know that our muscles aren’t snapping back anywhere after we stretch them.  We would be a convulsing mess in every yoga class—our limbs snapping back into place after every pose—and the stretch sensation or perceived elongation of our tissues wouldn’t last a moment longer than the time spent performing the stretch!  We also don’t know much about muscle knots, what they are or how they’re caused—so the claim that a stretched muscle will knot up while “snapping” back into place has no basis.

The suggestion in the article is to tape up your back and shoulders while in an upright posture, so that every time you slouch, you’ll feel the tug of the tape that will remind you to straighten up.  That’s right—if you’re a sloucher, the answer is to chronically contract your back and shoulder muscles to avoid knots . . .

Restore mobility where scars limit it.
“Think of that rubber band again—that’s your fascia, the connective tissues that encase your muscles and help you move freely. Now imagine placing a heavy object on top of it. All of a sudden, its movements are limited.”   The offered solution is to pull and tape the scar tissue to remove the pressure off the underlying layers of tissue.  

First of all, as we discussed above, connective tissue (fascia is a type of connective tissue) has a viscoelastic mechanical property.  Fascia also has various other mechanical properties that determine how it behaves, but a rubber band is not one of them.  Second, scar tissue IS fascia, however it is fascia whose collagen fibers are organized differently so that it is less functional than other types of fascia. Third, our tissues are so intricately connected! If a piece of tape on a scar can unload pressure from deeper layers of woven and interconnected tissue so much that those deeper tissues actually behave differently, it has not yet been qualified in the research.

Find and activate smaller, stabilizing muscles.
The article suggests taping up your abs for sensory input so you can feel when they’re working or not during exercise. That idea seems plausible (considering that the majority of the research results that conclude KT Tape effective can be boiled down to sensory input causing change in movement behavior) . . . were it not for the article’s suggestion to tape your transverse abdominis!  Your TvA is your deepest abdominal muscle under several layers of tissue and other muscles.  The idea that a piece of tape on your belly can help you determine the activation of this deep muscle is highly unlikely.

This blog post addresses about half the claims made in the article. The point isn’t about KT Tape. The point is that the internet today allows anyone to say anything. The dissemination of false information is at an all-time high even from legitimate publications and professionally licensed doctors and therapists. Always get a second and third and fourth opinion. Just remember, the more certain the claim sounds, the more likely it’s not an evidence based claim.

keep moving. (or move with me!)

xoxo