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The $180 Reliefband Flex is an anti-nausea accessory that is designed to attach to an Apple Watch, allowing for a single wrist-worn device that is able to cut down on or eliminate motion sickness, migraine nausea, pregnancy nausea, and more.

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You might be wondering what an anti-nausea device has to do with Apple, but many VR headsets cause motion sickness in people who are prone to feeling ill from motion, and Apple's own VR headset is set to launch in the not too distant future. The Apple Vision Pro won't be coming until 2024, so it's not yet clear if it will cause the same motion sickness in vulnerable people that other headsets cause, but if it does, the Reliefband might be a solution for some.

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I am prone to motion sickness, so I thought I'd give the Reliefband a try. I get ill from car rides, 3D rides (and sometimes movies), VR headsets, boats, and first-person shooter video games - basically anything where my brain gets signals that I'm moving while my body is stationary. I've always had this problem, so I'm familiar with various treatments.

The Reliefband uses electrical pulses targeted at the underside of the wrist. It targets the median nerve in the wrist, and the pulses stimulate the nerve to interrupt nausea signals traveling to the brain. There are several similar products on the market, and there have been studies that suggest this kind of acustimulation is effective for nausea, but there have also been studies that suggest it is not, so keep that in mind here.

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The Reliefband Flex that I tested looks like a medical device. It's not at all sleek, and in fact, it's bulky on my small wrist. It's made from a plastic material with a button and pulse level indicators on the front and two metal plates on the back. It has watch straps and can be worn alone with a nylon band, but it is also designed to attach to an Apple Watch.

reliefband-on-wrist.jpg

Reliefband provides a special band that attaches to both the Apple Watch and the Reliefband hardware, so the Apple Watch goes on the top of the wrist and the Reliefband goes at the underside of the wrist. With this setup, you don't have to wear a device on both wrists if you need the benefits of the Reliefband.

reliefband-side-close-up-bulk.jpg

I have small wrists so there's not a lot of space between the Apple Watch and the Reliefband, and it's not the most comfortable setup, but it can be better than having two separate devices. The band that Reliefband provides is reasonably comfortable, and it reminds me of Apple's woven bands, but again, there's a lot of bulk on a small wrist with the dual-band setup. The band is made of a soft velcro-like material with velcro fasteners to size it. The Flex version uses replaceable batteries, so it does not need to be charged. Batteries need to be swapped at around the year mark, though that varies based on usage.

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To get the Reliefband to work properly, it needs to be precisely positioned. It has to go a half inch or so above the crease of the wrist, and it needs to be in the middle of the wrist. When it's turned on and in the proper spot, the pulses are felt in the palm and the middle finger. To use the Reliefband, conductivity gel is required, and a small tube comes with the device. The gel needs to be applied before use and also refreshed if it wears off because it makes the pulsing less uncomfortable and more effective.

There are five levels of power with the Reliefband Flex, and the idea is to set it on the lowest level that you need to address nausea. To me, it feels a little bit like getting a small shock. I did not find levels 1-3 to be too painful, but levels four and five really get my attention. With the lower levels, the pulsing can kind of fade into the background, and I think on someone with a larger wrist, the higher levels would too.

So does it work? For me, yes and no. I experimented with the Reliefband several times, in the car, when I had nausea from a migraine, playing a first-person video game, and using an Oculus, which always makes me ill. If I put the Reliefband on before I anticipated getting motion sick, it kept it at bay. Putting it on when I was already feeling nauseous did not work as well.

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I think part of the reason fo... Click here to read rest of article

Article Link: Review: Reliefband Flex Attaches to Your Apple Watch to Quell Motion Sickness
Seems like baloney
 
I do suffer from motion sickness (though I don't know how that is relevant) and if you sell something online you must offer a 14 day return police in Europe (and at least 72 hours in the US); so yeah, if the consumable product hasn't been opened or consumed you're welcome to to return it :p
Except, like Apple they offer a 14 day return no questions asked, both in US and Europe, it can be opened and tested, because it can't be consumed, as long as you return it in it's original packaging.
So no real reason an open minded and informed sufferer, can't try it, to see if it works for them.
Just to be clear, I don't think it will work for everybody, however there are no real factual reasons not to try it.
 
Except, like Apple they offer a 14 day return no questions asked, both in US and Europe, it can be opened and tested, because it can't be consumed, as long as you return it in it's original packaging.
So no real reason an open minded and informed sufferer, can't try it, to see if it works for them.
Just to be clear, I don't think it will work for everybody, however there are no real factual reasons not to try it.
game theory shows that when consumers have a "return period", they're more likely to accept unfair offers... without returning it.
 
Except, like Apple they offer a 14 day return no questions asked, both in US and Europe, it can be opened and tested, because it can't be consumed, as long as you return it in it's original packaging.
So no real reason an open minded and informed sufferer, can't try it, to see if it works for them.
Just to be clear, I don't think it will work for everybody, however there are no real factual reasons not to try it.

I think you'd need to find a factual reason to try it rather than find factual reasons not to try it. The burden of proof of the efficiacy of a device is on the company selling it and they're already in trouble for making claims which are not true. And there is absolutely no evidence that this device has any causal link to any outcome.

Clue: it's horse excrement. Dung. Kaka. Garbage. If you believe it, you're being intellectually dishonest to yourself. You owe yourself better.
 
Lots of doctors and scientists and experts in this thread.
Bad take. You don't need to be a doctor or scientist or expert to call out pseudoscientific excrement, middle school level biology and science is enough. Even if it were necessary to be a doctor or scientist or expert to debunk this, forums like this are anonymous, so you can respond to the arguments instead of using an argument from authority that is completely devoid of meaning when you don't actually know the knowledge level of the people debating.

on the one side of the argument here are people referring to actual biology and reason, on the other side there's people using pressure points and anecdote. I know what side I prefer to be on, even if I have no idea if they're actually doctors or scientists.
 
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Go to your local drug store and look for SEABands. These work, it puts pressure on a pressure point that is known to help


Totally with you on this. No idea if it's a placebo or what, but we go on a lot of cruises, and my baseline is Bonine, but when the sea gets really rough, I throw on the $9 Seabands, and they work for me. I can still wear the Seabands and my AW, so no need for this $180 contraption.
 
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“to interrupt nausea signals traveling to the brain.”
Yeah no… there are no “nausea signals” travelling from your wrist to your brain.
Perhaps could work in the opposite direction. Blocking signals from your brain going to your stomach. Depending on how the nerves route through the body. But the actual input that triggers your brain to send those signals to your stomach, comes form the eyeballs in most cases, and yeah, they arent routed through your wrist before getting to the brain.
 
Totally with you on this. No idea if it's a placebo or what, but we go on a lot of cruises, and my baseline is Bonine, but when the sea gets really rough, I throw on the $9 Seabands, and they work for me. I can still wear the Seabands and my AW, so no need for this $180 contraption.
I used Sea Bands as well and they help for sure. Decided to try the Relief Band because of that success. I find the Relief Band to work even better, but of course it costs a lot more so if the Sea Band is good enough that’s definitely the way to go.

Also don’t know if it is the placebo effect or not, but don’t really care because it helps.
 
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There's an argument that if the results are real and sustained, it doesn't matter whether it's a placebo or not. It's not unusual for doctors to prescribe placebos.

But yes, I'm not convinced that this product is anything more than that.
A less expensive model, say a magnetic bracelet would be a better value… 🙁

 
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I have suffered from motion sickness my entire life, and The Relief Band (which I first discovered around 20 years ago) has been the only thing that has worked for me.
Over the decades I have tried:

Ginger, wrist bands with pressure beads which had no effect on me whatsoever.

Scopolamine patches - may have helped a little with nausea on my cruise but created a metallic taste in my mouth (which meant I didn’t enjoy eating on my vacation!). After 3 days I developed blurred vision (a known side effect) which didn’t resolve itself until a few days after I removed the patch.

Non-drowsy Bonine, Dramamine: helped with nausea but made me feel drugged and drowsy

I can’t remember how I discovered the Relief Band, but it was life changing! I have worn it on cruises, riding in the backseat of a car on Hwy 1, and on smaller boats/ships on the San Francisco Bay. I have not gotten sick once since using the Relief Band, which I always turn on at the start of my journey.

As for cost, I have had the same band (with replaceable batteries) for 20 years. Before then, I would have paid anything for a device that would have rescued me from the terrible motion sickness I have experienced, not to mention ruined vacations.

This device is also the only thing that has worked for my sister. And I recently loaned my Relief Band to a friend’s husband who suffers from terrible seasickness. He wore it on their cruise and it worked like a charm. He was feeling so good, that he took it off one night, and it was the only time he got sick. So he put it back on and his nausea subsided.( His wife was so grateful, she ordered one for him before their cruise was over!)

I was the kid who was always carsick on family vacations. One time I even got sick standing on the dock (watching the boats bob up and down) as I waited for an Alcatraz tour boat. (I even considered throwing myself overboard while stranded on a small sailboat for two hours on a lake in Switzerland, sicker than I have ever been, waiting for the winds to pick up!)

My point in sharing this, is that I thought I was going to have to live with motion sickness for the rest of my life, forgoing cruises, boat rides, and scenic drives. Now I can plan my recreational activities without restrictions.

I don’t know why the Relief Band works for me and so many people for whom I have recommended it, but it does.

Best of all, it is non-pharmaceutical and doesn’t involve ingesting anything. So there are no lingering side effects.

It appears that some of the negative reviews were written by people who have never tried it, or maybe never even suffered from motion sickness.

I believe that there is a trial period for returning the Relief Band. Amazon usually makes returns fairly seamless. So for those whose motion sickness has not been alleviated by other methods. What do you have to lose?
 
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