I was in the classic head-between-my-knees pose — or as close as one can get to it when corralled into the 30-something-inch seat pitch of an airplane — hoping I wasn’t making my neighbors wary while I tried to quell the waves of nausea rolling through my body. I turned on my Reliefband and waited.
Within just a few minutes, the watch-shaped, drug-free wearable device for treating nausea associated with morning and motion sickness worked its magic, and I was able to unfold myself from a makeshift fetal position to give my seatmate a sheepish grin.
The Reliefband works through neuromodulation, a technique that uses the body’s natural neural pathways to block waves of nausea produced by the stomach. It stimulates the median nerve on the underside of the wrist through programmed pulses with highly specific waveforms, frequency and intensity. These signals travel to the central nervous system and the part of the brain associated with vomiting, then regulate the neural pathways between the brain and stomach to mitigate nausea.
The band ($90) has intensity settings from one to five that users can adjust based on their needs. It can be ordered through the company’s website.
The Details
Reliefbandwww.reliefband.com
