Wrist Bands for car sickness

Alkatran

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I'm sure you've all seen, heard of, or used the wrist bands you wear to avoid getting car sick. Their made up of a band (duh) with a sort of button to apply pressure to the bottom of the wrist.

Anyways, I was wondering how they work. I've only ever used them when I was young (and only once or twice). I didn't get sick, although I was never much for car sickness. I remember them being uncomfortable...
 
I've never used one, but someone I know has. I just put pressure on my wrist with my fingers, and it works.

As to why it works, why, it's Chinese acupressure magic, man. Who knows how any of that stuff works?

What I'd like to know is, how did any of this stuff get discovered, much less refined? "Here, Chang, I have an idea. Let me stick these pins in your ass and maybe your eyes will feel better."

Or this nausea-wrist connection - did the ancient Chinese doctor test every square inch of a nauseous person's body? "Do anything?" "Nope." "Do anything?" "Nope" for all 3,000-odd square inches of his body?

Those crafty Chinese!
 
Alkatran said:
I'm sure you've all seen, heard of, or used the wrist bands you wear to avoid getting car sick. Their made up of a band (duh) with a sort of button to apply pressure to the bottom of the wrist.

Anyways, I was wondering how they work. I've only ever used them when I was young (and only once or twice). I didn't get sick, although I was never much for car sickness. I remember them being uncomfortable...
Click to expand...
The wrist stimulation effect is very well known. The key point (!) though is that it has nothing whatever to do with `meridians' or `chi'. My guess is that it's a neurological effect, judging by how quickly it works. It's often cited as evidence for acupuncture but I think it's something quite different.
 
Alkatran said:
I'm sure you've all seen, heard of, or used the wrist bands you wear to avoid getting car sick. Their made up of a band (duh) with a sort of button to apply pressure to the bottom of the wrist.

Anyways, I was wondering how they work. I've only ever used them when I was young (and only once or twice). I didn't get sick, although I was never much for car sickness. I remember them being uncomfortable...
Click to expand...

What makes you think they work beyond the placebo effect

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...d&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15018290&query_hl=2
 
Like others say it is an acupressure point. Acupressure like acupuncture is an unproven therapy and my guess is that effect is entirely placebo. Motion sickness is 90 percent in your mind. So a placebo may easily help with it.
 
Placebo is certainly a possible explanation, but it's not the only one.

One thing to keep in mind that motion sickness isn't really sickness. It's your nervous system getting confused, motion signals triggering nausea responses. It's a neurological phenomenon to begin with, where your sensations are being interpreted incorrectly by your brain. It's not that hard to believe that if you start feeding your brain other nervous system input, you might override or drown out the signals that are triggering the nausea response. Why pressure on the wrist in particular might do that I have no idea, but it's also possible that applying pressure to other parts of the body could work just as well and that the wrist isn't actually special in this regard.
 
Ziggurat said:
Why pressure on the wrist in particular might do that I have no idea, but it's also possible that applying pressure to other parts of the body could work just as well and that the wrist isn't actually special in this regard.
Click to expand...

Many things are possible but nothing has been proven. As far as I know it is all speculation including the idea that wrist pressure does help.
 
I remember those things! I hated them, they didn't seem to do any good, and now not only was I feeling motion sickness, I also had this uncomfortable thing pressing on my wrist.
Ugh.
 
When I was desperately seeking morning sickness remedies, I ran across a lot of websites that said those bands were effective on morning sickness for 60% of women. Don't know where that number came from, but at that point I was willing to try anything. They didn't do squat for me. What did work was drugs - whoever invented Diclectin is my personal hero.
 
Well...

I did a little digging and there's one product that claims to stimulate the median nerve.
carpal2.gif


They claim that this some how gets the brain to calm the signals going to the stomach.

here's a link to the site.
LINK

They have disclaimers on thier site but not the usual one about not being a medical device. Also there are no testimonials, the usual staple of a phoney device. So there may be some research behind this one.

Google (scholar) throws up a few links about the median nerve being connected to the stomach indirectly so I'm not 100% convinced this is placebo effect yet.

I think it might be worth a little more looking into.

O.
:)
 
Orangutan said:
They have disclaimers on thier site but not the usual one about not being a medical device. Also there are no testimonials, the usual staple of a phoney device. So there may be some research behind this one.
Click to expand...
If it's woo, it's atypical woo.
 
The median nerve is not connected to the stomach. A breif look through pub med makes me think that they have not done enough studies to show it works much less anything about how it works.
 
I remain dubious, but could be swayed by a good DB test. How you could do this... I have no idea.

My ex was a big advocate of them. She admitted that they might be placebo, but figured even if they were, she felt better wearing them than when not. I couldn't argue with that logic.

We went out on a boat when we went to Italy recently and she forget to bring them. She wasn't all that worried, and didn't experience any sea sickness anyway. She agreed when I suggested that if she had have worn them, the lack of sea-sickness would have been attributed to the wrist-bands.

She's far from gullible, and does understand how science works. I'm still open minded about them, but side with 'placebo' so far.

Athon
 
In any case, don't confuse "placebo effect" with "doesn't work".

I seriously doubt that these things work through acupressure meridians and stuff, calling "placebo effect" doesn't mean they're totally worthless.
 
These could also work by providing a stimulus that distracts from the motion sickness. That and the placebo effect could be enough to lessen some discomfort.

I remember buying a headband version of this a while back when I was really sick; I don't remember it making any difference.

I think that in trying to figure this one out, it's safe to ignore all the acupuncture/chi/meridians stuff and just focus on the question of whether pressure on the wrists has any real effect on motion sickness.
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dogdoctor
Motion sickness is 90 percent in your mind.


I'd like to see the source of this statistic. A similar one was often quoted to me in anger when I would get carsick as a child. I'm not upset or anything, but I don't seem to remember thinking myself into being sick at the age of two.
 
prewitt81 said:
quote:
Originally posted by Dogdoctor
Motion sickness is 90 percent in your mind.


I'd like to see the source of this statistic. A similar one was often quoted to me in anger when I would get carsick as a child. I'm not upset or anything, but I don't seem to remember thinking myself into being sick at the age of two.
Click to expand...

AHA you've caught me. I have no source for that. It's just an oft repeated statement. There may or may not be a scientific basis for them but there is an empirical basis for it I have been on a lot of boats (former Sea Explorer) and studied physiology a bit and know that motion sickness comes from the difference between what your motion sensors feel and what you see. So actually if you are able to look out of the boat that you are riding in so that you have a visual reference point which does not move along with the boat (such as the horizon or land which is relatively far away) then you will not be seasick unless you think you will. Likewise you can close your eyes. However once you have become seasick it is difficult to completely rid yourself of those feelings, and that is where the mind comes in. If you allow yourself to dwell on being seasick you will be more sick even after removing the discordant inputs by the two techniques I mentioned and if you avoid thinking about being seasick you will be fine.
 
prewitt81 said:
quote:
Originally posted by Dogdoctor
Motion sickness is 90 percent in your mind.


I'd like to see the source of this statistic. A similar one was often quoted to me in anger when I would get carsick as a child. I'm not upset or anything, but I don't seem to remember thinking myself into being sick at the age of two.
Click to expand...
I distinctly remember the 400 mile trips in our '57 Chevy station wagon across the Texas plains every summer. My love and pastime was reading, which would almost immediately result in "that queasy feeling" if the car was moving. Had I known of these methods, I would have eagerly tried them. As it was, the only relief (after I was a little older, as my dad [an MD] didn't think really young kids should get to like the delicious raspberry tablets, I was given Bonine [Truely a gift from Ed] http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/uspdi/202343.html
and suffered little after that).

I can't in any way accept that anyone would self-induce such misery! NoJoy.

I would have joyously pinched my wrist, if it would have been suggested/worked.

Dave
 
For a car you need to either look forward at objects that are in the distance and so are a stable reference point or you can look out the side of the car if there are no telephone posts along the road and you focus on a point far off so that again it seems stable and not flashing past your face at whatever speed the car is traveling. Closing your eyes also works. If you are already car sick many people tend to focus on being sick with their eyes closed which makes them sicker. Whatever you do don't read in the car or play video games too I imagine or look at others in the car or a map. I however have little problems in cars. I have problems on a boat. If I am out on a boat in rough water and have to do something which required me to spend more than a minute looking at something on the boat such as cutting bait or rigging a fishing line I start to get seasick and can stop it by doing as I said.
 
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