Part of the series: The Great Travel-Sickness Experiment
I tried my new wristbands today.
It’s was only a short journey of about 9 miles each way. I only had mild motion sickness, but I think that was due to the short journey rather than the wristbands.
They are quite tight on the wrist and even after only 10-15 minutes of wearing there was quite a mark left around my arms, the sort you get round your leg when your sock are too tight, and I wondered if the mark where the nylon bobble was, was actually going to leave a bruise. After 10 minutes or so the marks had disappeared.
When I put the bands on, they felt very tight, as I mentioned previously, and I thought it would annoy and start to itch and stuff, but they didn’t. I think they could on a long journey, though.
Getting the bands in the correct position may be a struggle and will need a bit of trial and error to get right.
You’re supposed to have the bobble three finger widths up your arm from the first wrist crease, and then in between the the tendons. The distance up from my wrist is fairly obvious, but I can only find one tendon. I don’t know if I’m a freak with just one tendon, although everything seems to work ok, it’s hidden behind other stuff or I just don’t know what I’m looking for, but I could only find one.
I think that may be the biggest stumbling block to getting the bands to work correctly, if they do indeed work, is the positioning of them. They need to be in a certain position and you’re trying to get an untrained person to get them in the right place with a basic diagram and short description.
Well, that’s my initial thoughts on them: comfy enough on short distances, not sure if they’re postioned correctly, but they didn’t work. I am not put off though, in my quest to have my head screwed by a cheap bit of woo I shall carry on and try them on a longer journey. Although when that’ll be, I don’t know yet.
I have never been troubled by travel sickness. Well, I may have puked in the car on the way to Skegness when I was five years old, but if I did i) i can’t remember it and ii) who hasn’t?
I’m fine in aeroplanes, even better when I’ve had a few beers. I’m good in cars, I’m not troubled by trains and when everyone is emptying their guts out the wrong end on a ferry, I’m out on deck laughing as the waves crash over the side of the boat.
That is until we bought our latest car.
That car is a Mazda 5. It’s a great car. It seats more than five people. It goes quite well, has loads of cubby holes for storing stuff, has six gears so cruising at 70mph is at about 2k rpm and the bit the kids love the best: sliding rear doors.
The problem I have with it is that everytime I’m a passenger, in the front or back, I need to puke. Or sleep. Or puke then sleep.
How do I know it’s the car that’s the problem? Well, as I mentioned at the start of this post I have never suffered travel sickness before. I have never suffered it previously on any other form of transport, in any vehicle with any driver. The closest I’ve come to it is a condition of the inner ear called ‘benign paroxysmal positional vertigo‘. This involved getting out of bed and instead of walking down the bed to the end of the room, I walked diagonally across the room and nearly through the window. I felt sick just bending over to put my socks on.
Now. I could resort to travel sickness tablets, which I have been using. They work, too. Presumably they contain the same substance doctors give you before a general anaesthetic to stop you puking whilst unconscious flat out on your back. The trouble with that is that travel sickness pills ain’t cheap and the cost soon adds up. I’m looking for an alternative.
I’m gonna give these babies a go…
(the one on the left is inside out)
The blurb on back of box says…
Using the ancient Chinese principles of acupressure, many people find wearing the bands on both wrists can help control nausea including all forms of motion sickness.
Acupressure is believed to work by restoring the balance of negative (Yin) and positive (Yan) ions in the body as imbalances are believed to affect health.
What do you reckon? Will they work? Yin and Yan? Acupressure? They’ve been known about for centuries. Of course they work.
Don’t they?
Boots, whose own brand product this is but made by Sea-Band, don’t seem quite so sure. No mention of trials or percentages of people that find these work. Using words like ‘believe’ in the blurb, too. Using “many people believe” is the same as “lots of unqualified peoples’ opinion”.
Not being an actual scientist chap I could be wrong, but I didn’t realise that Yin and Yan were ions. I thought that ions were ions. After a quick look at the all-knowing Wikipedia, there is in fact positive and negative ions, but they’re not called Yin and Yan and whether they are positive or negative ions depends on how many electrons they have compared to how many protons.
So, if I follow these directions…
A band must be worn on each wrist with the button placed over the Nei Kuan point.
To find this point place your middle three fingers on the inside of each wrist with the edge of the third finger on the first wrist crease.
The correct point is just under the edge of your index finger and between the two central tendons. Position the button face downwards over the Nei Kuan point.
Can be worn while sleeping.
These elasticated bands with a nylon nobble on them will alter how many electrons my ions have and bring me back to balance and stop my travel sickness in our Mazda 5.
I’m not so sure it’s gonna work. But for a one-time payment of £7.99, I’ll give it a go. I’m willing to have my skeptic head turned inside out with a result that may not be quite what I expect.
I’ll keep you updated.
*if you have any other suggestions, apart from those rubber things that you dangle from the back of the car, then let me know in the comments
For the record:
Fibre content:
Acrylic: 64.2%
Nylon: 24.2%
Elastane: 11.6%
