Runners and marathoners are always looking for ways to keep their feet in pristine shape, and blisters are often one of the more common issues that develop in regular runners. Some try to mitigate their risk of blisters by taping certain areas of their foot, but is that technique effective?
According to an interesting study published in Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, scientists believe taping does decrease blister development, but they can’t prove it.
For their study, researchers equipped 90 ultramarathoners with pieces of 3M Micropore paper tape to their foot. One foot was taped, while the other was not. Dr. Grant Lipman, a surgeon at the Division of Emergency Medicine at Stanford, said the tape was developed to adhere to high pressure areas of the skin.
“(The tape) is easy to apply to the toes, heels, or anywhere else on the foot that is at risk of getting a hot spot or blister,” Lipman said.
Once outfitted with the tape, the 90 participants then proceeded to complete a 150-mile marathon over the course of a few days. All participants had developed blisters by the end of the ultramarathon, and most responded that the blisters developed in the first two days of racing.
After analyzing blister development, researchers found no significant difference in the number of blisters that had developed between the two feet, but surprisingly, 84 percent of participants said they would use the Micropore tape in the future. Lipman said the ultramarathon may have been too intense an atmosphere for the tape to work effectively.
“Our methods may have been too rigorous, and we were unable to solve the question we set out to answer,” Lipman said.
Follow Up Study
Based on their belief that the previous study didn’t use optimal methods, researchers conducted a second study. This time they applied the tape to only the areas of the foot prone to blister development, instead of just covering the whole foot. Lipman said this produced much improved results.
“This second study over this past year was similar, but applied the tape to people just where they typically got blisters (rather than the entire foot), and it worked amazingly well,” he said. “By making the study methods more specific to the individual, we were able to show what the majority of those study participants in PreTAPED (and) I already knew – it works.”
Dr. Silverman comments
It really boils down to whether or not you’re comfortable running with tape on your feet. Does it appear to be preventing blisters, or are you just undergoing the placebo effect?
I wish the doctors had gone into more detail about exactly how the second study proved the tape was effective in use, not just in perceived effectiveness.