Muscle Spasms & Taping

I spent my weekend with my good friend muscle spasms, yes all weekend. It seemed like no matter what I did from Saturday through Monday my left side was spasming. Luckily, my husband had gone with me to physical therapy last week and they showed him how to tape me. If you have muscle spasms this is something I’d definitely suggest you look into having done. Basically, it involves two types of tape. The lower layer is typical bandage tape, mainly there to protect your skin from the stronger tape that is used to contract and hold your muscles. The second layer of tape is pulled more tightly across the muscles being taped (in my case it goes vertically up from my bra strap and over my shoulder muscles. I don’t really know how it works, however I do know is that if applied correctly it prevents the muscles in my shoulder and neck from spasming.

They say you can leave this tape on up to 5 days, however I find that the tape irritates my skin after several hours and about 6 hours is the longest I can stand it before I have to take it off. However, just that amount of time usually is enough to help my pain and spasming quite a bit. My husband taped me both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, since he’s a bit new at this procedure, in both cases it took him two tries to get it pulled to just the right tension to prevent the spasming without causing pain. Too little tension does nothing, and too much hurts and sometimes causes increased spasms. While the taping didn’t permanently stop the spasming (it returned when the tape was removed) it was the only real relief I had during these few days.