Elastic therapeutic tape
pseudo-medicine product; elastic cotton strip with an acrylic adhesive
Elastic therapeutic tape, also called kinesiology tape or kinesiology therapeutic tape, Kinesio tape, k-tape, or KT is an elastic cotton strip with an acrylic adhesive that is purported to ease pain and disability from athletic injuries and a variety of other physical disorders. In individuals with chronic musculoskeletal pain, research suggests that elastic taping may help relieve pain, but not more than other treatment approaches, and no evidence indicates that it can reduce disability in chronic pain cases.
No convincing scientific evidence indicates that such products provide any demonstrable benefit in excess of a placebo, with some declaring it a pseudoscientific treatment.
History
Kenzo Kase, a Japanese–American chiropractor, developed the product in the 1970s. The company he founded markets variants under the brand name "Kinesio" and takes legal action to prevent the word being used as a genericised trademark.
A surge in popularity resulted after the product was donated to Olympic athletes in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and 2012 London Summer Olympics. The tapes' prominence and mass introduction to the general public have been attributed to Kerri Walsh who wore the tape on her shoulder, and who along with Misty May-Treanor dominated the 2008 beach volleyball event. In 2012, science journalist Brian Dunning speculated on why he had not seen "a single athlete, pro beach volleyball players included, wear Kinesio Tape outside of the Olympics". He believes that "sponsorship dollars may be entirely responsible for the popularity of Kinesio Tape during televised events."
Properties
The product is a type of thin, elastic cotton tape that can stretch up to 140% of its original length. As a result, if the tape is applied stretched greater than its normal length, it will "recoil" after being applied and therefore create a pulling force on the skin.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Elastic therapeutic tape” is pseudo-medicine product; elastic cotton strip with an acrylic adhesive. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Elastic, therapeutic and tape, not as a finished interpretation.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q917517. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elastic therapeutic tape” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.