Wrist Bands for car sickness

What Dogdoctor said.

I vividly remember setting off on a cross-channel trip late one evening as the first of the autumn gales set in. My cabin in the ferry was very basic, and very "inside". I started to feel very queasy very quickly. Even a momentary squint to see where I was threatened to set off the nausea. How I managed to get to the bathroom (along the corridor), perform my ablutions, get back to the cabin, get undressed and into bed, all with my eyes clamped shut, I'll never know, but I did it.

I'm fine in trains, but in buses I have to stare out of the window or I'm a goner. So frustrating if I've got something I want to read, but bitter experience tells me that if I try to read it I'll be a basket case inside half an hour. (Just ask my choir buddy, as we trundled through Italy and I kept exclaiming at the wonderful scenery until she told me to shut up and stay shut up - she was trying to read The Female Eunuch. I wanted to read The Name of the Rose, but knew better than to try. Fortunately the friendship survived....)

Rolfe.

PS. Dogdoctor, are you another vet? Where?
 
Cabin? Bed? On a cross-channel ferry?. It's only a two hour sail for Noah's sake!

Mind you- the sickest I have ever been was on a cross channel hovercraft. Airsick and seasick at the same time.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Cabin? Bed? On a cross-channel ferry?. It's only a two hour sail for Noah's sake!

Mind you- the sickest I have ever been was on a cross channel hovercraft. Airsick and seasick at the same time.
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OK, maybe my terminology was a bit out. Hook of Holland to Harwich. It's cross-channel to me, see?

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:


PS. Dogdoctor, are you another vet? Where?
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Yeah I am a vet in Hawaii. I surf so maybe that is why I have a certain tolerance to motion sickness since you are moving a lot when sitting on a surfboard waiting for waves. I used to make others puke as a kid by noticing who was sea or car sick and then talk about being sick and puking and make noises like I was puking. (I don't do that anymore:p) There is definitely a big psychological component to motion sickness.
 
Hawaii! (Thinks...)

If you need a Pathological Vet- Rolfe's the one for you.

However, she gets lost easily and would need a helper if she was ever to find Hawaii. I can also butle, wax surf boards and catch a frisbee in my teeth, which saves buying a dog.

Did I mention I have this fascination with volcanoes too...:D
 
Soapy Sam said:
Hawaii! (Thinks...)

If you need a Pathological Vet- Rolfe's the one for you.

However, she gets lost easily and would need a helper if she was ever to find Hawaii. I can also butle, wax surf boards and catch a frisbee in my teeth, which saves buying a dog.

Did I mention I have this fascination with volcanoes too...:D
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You wouldn't be catching much frisbees in your teeth if my dog was around:) Butle? Is that like being a butler or ....?
 
Yeah, well, maybe I don't know the exact eastern boundaries of the English Channel, but at least I can spell (usually). Oh, and Soapy Sam is the president of the depressed pedant's society, but he still can't spell.

Welcome Dogdoctor. I do laboratory medicine in Sussex in England, we also have Badly Shaved Monkey who is in general practice somewhere in the east of England, and John Bentley, who is some sort of Merikan and an orthopod if I remember correctly.

Anyone else for the veterinary roll call, step forward.

Rolfe.
 
I kan too spel! (Though not in Hawaian). I just cant type.
Were you aware that "Aa" is a word in Hawaian?
Type of lava.
Hawaian has no word for "Eskimo" I understand.

Butle, vb.; to provide the services of a butler.

Isn't " orthopod" a wonderful word, by the way? Best foot forward and all that. One imagines an orthopod standing very straight, perhaps at ninety degrees to the floor.

R- perhaps a spin-off thread for professions in general? There seems to be a revival of interest on the forum in knowing what other posters do for a living.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Butle, vb.; to provide the services of a butler.
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Where did you get that? Because to the best of my recollection P. G. Wodehouse spelled it with a double "t".

Rolfe
 
Rolfe said:
Where did you get that? Because to the best of my recollection P. G. Wodehouse spelled it with a double "t".
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Isn't "Butle" somewhere near Liverpool? ;)
 
Rolfe said:

I vividly remember setting off on a cross-channel trip late one evening as the first of the autumn gales set in. My cabin in the ferry was very basic, and very "inside". I started to feel very queasy very quickly. Even a momentary squint to see where I was threatened to set off the nausea. How I managed to get to the bathroom (along the corridor), perform my ablutions, get back to the cabin, get undressed and into bed, all with my eyes clamped shut, I'll never know, but I did it.
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I remember feeling a bit nauseous on a blustery crossing from the Hook of Holland. Went to bed early to try and sleep it off. Suddenly the cabin door bursts open and this naked female climbs into my bunk.
Next day my mates ascribed this "event" to the demented ravings of a delerious mind suffering from alcohol to ward off sea-sickness.
Now I know the truth, as do you all.;)
 
Rolfe- A "Buttler" is (I am informed) a sexual pervert of some kind. I am shocked a lady would even have heard of such, far less imply that I might stoop to such behaviour.
(Besides, with my back, stooping gets harder every year).

I've just spoken with a moderately sceptical friend who is convinced wrist bands do help. Hmm. I find in small boats , closing eyes and sticking fingers in my ears is useful, possibly because of some stabilising effect in the old semicirculars- or just because I shut down the feedback loop?

Control, or having something to do is best. I never heard of a carsick driver.

Undoubtedly the worst factor in motion sickness is the smell of someone else being sick. That usually sets me off.

On which note- Pepperoni Pizza for lunch.
 
I tried them a few times. I thought they were working until I started to feel a bit odd and then thought "No, this is definately not working!"...and was promptly and violently sick.

Ginger tea however works well.

Anti seasick pills work but I suspect they work on the basis that they knock you out for about 3 hours by which time you are there.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Undoubtedly the worst factor in motion sickness is the smell of someone else being sick. That usually sets me off.

On which note- Pepperoni Pizza for lunch.
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See if you can get some extra parmesan on it. ;)
 
I've never used the actual wristbands myself but ever since I was a child, my Dad got me to massage my pulse point if I began to feel nauseous and it definitely helped. I am very prone to psychosomatically induced nausea and if I do that massage trick I can feel my pulse lowering and the creeping cold sweatiness begining to pass. But it isn't a very strong effect and if I am going to be badly affected then it doesn't help.

Whether it is simply a placebo effect or or an properly specific physiological response to stimulation of that point I don't know. Is that pulse point special and/or is it the effect of having something to focus on other than your sense of nausea? This is a classic example of something that would be difficult to trial blindly, but it could be done.
 
Soapy Sam said:
I find in small boats , closing eyes and sticking fingers in my ears is useful, possibly because of some stabilising effect in the old semicirculars- or just because I shut down the feedback loop?

Control, or having something to do is best. I never heard of a carsick driver.
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Closing the eyes will always cut off the feedback loop, whatever else you do. I can't see any reason why sticking your fingers in your ears should affect your semicircular canals at all.

Drivers aren't sick because they watch the road. Or I hope they watch the road. Just "having something to do" doesn't cut it - if I try to "do" anything that involves concentrating on something inside the car - from reading to playing solitaire - I'll be sick within fifteen minutes. On the other hand, if I studiously stare out of the window, I may be bored senseless, but I won't be sick.

Rolfe.
 
I was thinking specifically of something to do with driving the car, such as watching for speed cameras, or navigating. I have wondered how Motor Rally navigators manage to read their detailed maps and charts without becoming ill.
I asked a friend, normally a carsickness sufferer, who had been forced to mapread in a vehicle on a TA exercise. He commented that he had "Just had too much to do to even think of being sick." It does seem that concentrating hard enough on a task can suppress the onset of symptoms, but I suspect for most of us that would be hard to achieve unless an outside force very strongly required us to do so.

On the semicircular canal thing. "Sticking fingers in my ears" is an inadequate description - I'll try to be clearer; what actually has worked on several occasions is-
1.Lie down, parallel to the axis of the vessel.
2. Close eyes.
3. Cradle head in arms, elbows on chest, thumbs pressing the ear flaps (not the lobes, the bits about an inch above the lobes) into the cavity of the ear with considerable force to cut off nearly all sound.

The result is to provide a rather stable platform for the head. It's the cradling action that is the stabiliser, not the pressing on the ear drums. (Which I did not make clear.) The rolling action of the boat can be further dampened by very slight negative feedback movements of the head. The net effect is that actual movement of the head relative to a true horizontal, is very much reduced.

A final addition is to hum , quietly but deeply. I find this creates an environment of near total sensory deprivation.

You could easily walk off with my wallet when I'm in this state. I'm sure it looks pretty stupid too. I've never known it to fail in a boat though.

It didn't work in the hovercraft though. First, I could not lie down, being strapped in a seat. Second, I was constantly being grabbed and teased by two "friends" on either side of me. Third, the motion of a hovercraft in heavy seas is very different from a boat.- faster, higher frequency, more like an aircraft in turbulence.

Oddly, though a terrible coward on aircraft, I've only been sick once- as a kid on a school geography trip, when the smell of several others being sick got to me.
 
I get sick on every vehicle imaginable apart from the train.

I've tried the wristbands before and I thought they were useless.

To be honest nothing really worked for me except sticking Kwells under my tongue.
 
Norwegian studies by NAFKAM

First, see this article in at 'www.forskning.no',
http://www.forskning.no/Artikler/2005/januar/1105707329.28
you will find a picture of how the double blind test is performed (or rather, the two wristbands).

[cite]
I en undersøkelse ble 97 gravide i Tromsø utstyrt med et armbånd. Halvparten fikk et som ga et lett, kontinuerlig trykk på et bestemt punkt på underarmen. Resten fikk et "narre-armbånd" (placebo).

Resultatet viste at i gruppa med akupressurarmbåndet rapporterte 71 prosent om mindre intense plager og kortere varighet av kvalmen. Også de som gikk med placeboarmbåndet rapporterte om mindre plager, men ikke i like stor grad som de med akupressurarmbåndet.

Mens placebogruppen fikk redusert varigheten på kvalmen med 0,85 timer i døgnet, fikk akupunkturgruppen redusert varigheten med 2,74 timer per døgn.
[/cite]

[my word by word translation]
In a test were 97 pregnants in Tromsø equipped with a wristband. Half received one which gave a light, continous pressure on a certain point on the lower arm. The rest received a "fool-wristband" (placebo).

The result showed that in the group with the akupressure wristband reported 71 percent of less intense discomfort and shorter duracy of the nausea. Also those who walked with the placebo wristband reported on less discomfort, but not as much as those with the akupressur wristband.

While the placebogroup was given redused length of nausea with 0.85 hours a day, got the acupressure group redused the length with 2.74 hours per day
[/my word by word translation, I know it sounds silly]

The article goes on to praise acupressure and Norheim (see below) suggests the unlucky ones (that woul be 29%) should try acupuncture. He also suggests two positions for understanding the effect for people: 1) it seems irrational 2) if we westerners swallow a camel, we will see that the energy flows of the body do it, and they are a useful tool to understand 'everything'. Even though he doesn't find it important whether one should believe the idea of energy flows or not.

hm?

this research was produced by NAFKAM,
see http://uit.no/nafkam/ for what NAFKAM is (complimentary and alternative medicine)
for references to the original papers:

choose english, go to 'research' | 'publication' and you will be offered two publication lists (in norwegian), one sorted alphabetically, the other on year, you should be able to understand it. look for the author 'Norheim'.

in Jan 2001 (although they state on the list sorted on year that is was in 2005) Norheim et al published a paper "Akupressur mot svangerskapskvalme" ("Acupressur for morning sickness in pregnancy" [1] in "Tidsskrift for den norske lægeforening" (Journal for the norwegian doctor union), http://www.tidsskriftet.no/pls/lts/pa_lts.vis_seksjon?vp_seks_id=398652see
Now, AFAIK this publication journal has merit, at least in Norway. I haven't looked up any comments to the article, if anyone are interested, I'll have a look around. This article has an english abstract available. If anyone else understands norwegian, feel free to further translate, but:

A similar article, I guess, was also published by the same authors[2], in english i presume, but I don't have access to this journal. This would be more convenient than translation, if anyone have access.

Pardon my typos and spelling mistakes.

[1] Norheim AJ, Pedersen EJ, Fønnebø V og Berge L. Akupressur mot svangerskapskvalme. Tidsskrift for Den norske lægeforening, 121(23):2712-2715

[2] Norheim AJ, Pedersen EJ, Fønnebø V og Berge L. Acupressure treatment of morning sickness in pregnancy. A randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled study. Scand J prim Health Care 2001;19:43-7.
 
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