I found a study (2021) that at least says it’s approved/indicated for nausea. Most of this meta analysis has to do with post operative care, some of the data is fairly old at this point (early 2000s) and I’m not sure I’d depend on relief band for post-op care, but who knows. All I can say, it definitely works for me in the theme park world. It blocks out whatever signal usually makes me feel so much motion sickness on screen rides, so that I can experience the ride as close to nausea-free as possible. Is it just a distraction? Sure- but that’s what it claims to be. It’s sort of a potato potahhhto argument I guess. It was worth a shot to us, 30 day free return period, and we had a trip planned to universal Hollywood. So we tried the band, and my son and I both could ride simpsons without a problem. My husband is way more prone to motion sickness, and so we got him a band and he tried it on a later trip and also had success.
This is the study (not sure id call it a study- but medical and pharma research being what it is…):
Chemically speaking, do we really “know” how Dramamine/meclizine blocks nausea? Not really. We have guesses. Do we know that for some folks it gives massive side effects? Yeah- that’s me. I can’t tolerate it, even non-drowsy. But I can tolerate the relief band and what can I say- if I trick myself into not needing to close my eyes and do deep breaths all through star tours, I’m OK with that!
I read somewhere that Dramamine is an antihistamine. Where or when I read that, I can’t recall now.
If you’re the kind of person that can fall asleep with half a Dramamine and yet are comfortable with the wrist band, you tend to go with what works, placebo or not.
The point is…you don’t need to spend money on any device. You can do things like purposely pinching/scratching yourself, etc. Things that provide a similar distraction. The bands themselves are not actually doing anything to prevent motion sickness. It is the distraction that is doing that. You can just use alternative distractions!
So I’ve been taking half a less drowsy Dramamine the past few days in the afternoon and doing ok. Last night I took a whole one right at bedtime. Slept great hahaha.
I leave tomorrow morning and I think I’ll probably take half one about an hour before we ride GOTG if we get a bg.
Also pray my flight gets out on time because apparently lots of storms are coming through Philly tonight and tomorrow and we are flying from Boston!
Or it could be similar to a TENS machine used for pain management. It was the only thing I could use when my knee was replaced because I can’t take narcotics. It definitely helped manage the pain by distracting my nerves from the real pain. Sounds like a placebo effect, but it really wasn’t.
Perhaps the research you’ve read isn’t quite as clear it and they may be asking the wrong questions. My husband’s neurologist tells us that they really don’t know much about the nervous system. Heck, DD20’s neurologist told me the same thing on Friday.
Well after all this, I didn’t get a boarding group this morning and now we are stuck on the runway in Philly waiting our turn to takeoff which means I won’t be in the park by 1 to try for another. I know I can try again at 6 but we will be at dinner and probably will be exhausted.
Contemplating the ILL with hubby as we await our turn to takeoff …
Fair point! It 100% is just a distraction. Completely agree on that-- for us, it’s just a distraction that works. I’ve tried pinching myself and deep breathing to less success, and some folks have no problems with medical solutions like dramamine and what not. Whatever works!
This is spot on. It’s alarming how little we understand about the neurological system and the pathways. I remember learning all the serotonin pathways and theories about why SSRIs work to suppress depressive emotions, and now current breaking research is basically debunking all those hypotheticals to indicate that they don’t work at all, at least not in the way they thought they worked… To be fair, in the biochem classes I took way back these pathways are all described as theories. But you have to work with what we know I guess; imagine that we didn’t even have the genome coded within the course of (my) lifetime at least. Maybe there will be leaps and bounds of new understandings in the next few decades…
Regardless, I asked my husband how confident he is in, for instance, hypnosis for anesthesia during operations. He said he’s completely open to it, believes it can work very well, they’ve used it before, etc… What is hypnosis but the distraction from what’s “really” happening medically in your body? So it’s all distraction. Whether a little electric impulse messes with your senses so that you don’t notice your equilibrium being played with, or a drug mutes those triggers that would send the same message to your brain, it’s all a distraction I suppose.
Strangely, boats don’t affect me at all, but my youngest who can do spinning rides like no ones business gets “hella sick” on a boat.
I don’t know that I’d do hypnosis for anesthesia, tho I wouldn’t doubt it could work. I do know that I can do a mental feedback to reduce my arthritis discomfort. It also worked on a proximal spiral fracture of my left humerus. The usual pain meds - or sedatives - don’t seem to have much effect on anything with me. Between regular old aspirin and positive feedback I can be comfortable.
I think there is a lot of opportunity for new knowledge in many medical fields.
So long story short, I was able to secure a BG at the 6 pm drop. At 8, the skies opened up and it poured for about an hour. DD8 Was exhausted, so I told DH to go wait for our group to be called and I would go back to the resort with DD8 (I had already rode in may at a preview).
He was able to ride, and had the same issue as me. The first 60 seconds were amazing and then there were one two many spins and he felt nauseated. He still felt sick coming back on the monorail from the park.
I asked him if he would try it again and he said he didn’t know. It was mostly awesome but he didn’t like the last half of the ride, which pretty much echoes my sentiment.
I’m glad he got to experience the ride though, it was the only thing he wanted to do this trip. It’s just disappointing we both had the same reaction, although, I recovered much more quickly than he did.
