How Does Kinesio Tex Tape Work? 

Once placed on the skin, the Kinesio Tape pulls the upper layers of skin, creating more space between the dermis and the muscle. The increased space helps you rehabilitate in a number of ways:

• It helps to relieve pressure on the lymph channels in the area between the muscle and the dermis, allowing drainage through an affected area. 
• It decreases pain. During an injury, the space between the epidermis and the muscle is lessened causing compression on nerves, resulting in sensitivity to pressure, touch and heat.
• It pushes more fluid through the muscle, allowing for greater muscle contraction. This helps with muscle fatigue, increasing range of motion, and allowing better muscle contraction.
• It increases the injured space between your and fascia and lymph channels (more info below), reducing pain and increasing joint mobility. 

Fascia is the material the divides and separates your muscles from your internal organs. Lymph channels pass through the fascia between the bone and the muscle and the skin and the muscle. These channels remove fluids and chemical substances in the muscles.

When injured, the flow of lymph can be either restricted or increased, resulting in an accumulation of fluid behind the congested area. This results in swelling that decreases the space between the muscle and skin, causing pain.

• Mechanical, which improves stability and biomechanics
• Fascia (or fascial), which creates direct movement of the fascia
• Space, which decreases pressure over a target tissue
• Ligament/tendon, which decreases stress on a ligament or tendon
• Functional, which provides sensory stimulation to assist or limit motion.
• Circulatory/lymphatic, which moves lymphatic fluid from congested areas