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Europe In Summer
Europe calls to Americans — maybe it’s the history, or perhaps the romance. Whatever it is, its pull is nearly irresistible. Those of us who suffer from motion sickness find the pull isn’t as strong given the nausea, retching, and vomiting we experience when traveling by car, plane, train, boat or even, on a bad day, an elevator. However, it’s summer and time to get our vacay on! Don’t let motion sickness ruin your day (or your vacay); instead, start living your life. With Reliefband® on the wrist, you control those nasty symptoms, and you’ll find travel isn’t the nausea-inducing torture it used to be. If you’re ready to plan your visit, we have a few favorite spots to share. Majorca is a Spanish island drenched in ancient ruins, mountains, and beach resorts. It is a land to suit nearly every preference. Pack lots of sunscreen and relax. Corfu provides a bit of the touristy beach vibe, but primarily, it’s an island that introduces you to the slow pace of life in Greece. If you want to immerse yourself in the Greek culture, this is the perfect spot. Scotland, the land of lochs, moors, kilt-wearing men, castles, golf courses, bagpipes, and cities and landscapes so beautiful, it melts the heart. No one ever regrets a trip to Scotland. Really, there are a thousand spots around Europe that would delight anyone looking for a place to land for a week or two. The point is to get out there and enjoy life. Don’t let the misery of motion sickness stop you from trying new things. Live your life in full motion!
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Gone Fishing
Fishing. It’s simple for some people. Hop in a boat and head toward open water. It’s not so simple for those who suffer from seasickness. Going on a boat can bring on feelings of nausea, retching, and even vomiting. Guess what? Reliefband® treats those nasty symptoms. That’s right, you no longer need to be the one left on the dock. It’s time to join your friends and do more than just cut bait. Now that you have the seasickness sorted, you need to do a few other things before you start hauling in fish. In addition to your Reliefband® and the actual gear (rod, reel, etc.) needed to catch the fish, you’ll want a life jacket, sunscreen, food, potable water, a cooler with ice in it to pack out the fish you catch, a first aid kit, bug spray, sunglasses, and don’t forget to zip your keys into a pocket or clip them to your belt loop. Nothing is as sad as a loaded key ring drifting out of sight beneath the water. If you’re fishing on the boat, you may need to have a license, if legally required. These days, you can usually order one online. Be aware that, depending on what type of fish you’re going after, you may need more than one license or permit. One other thing—anything you want to keep dry should be placed in a waterproof bag. Soggy sandwiches and runny maps are funny only when they happen to the other guy. Do you have tips for prepping for a fishing trip? Please share them in the comments for everyone to read. Have fun out there!
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5 VR Games You’ll Want
It’s still early days for many VR offerings. Developers aren’t sure if the money is there for a time- and talent-intensive effort, but we say, bring it! VR is fun, and if VR-related nausea creeps in, well, that’s what Reliefband® is for. Slip it on your wrist and play on. So, what’s looking good in the game world? These are a few that caught our attention: Minecraft VR is here. Instead of staring at the screen with your roommate or little sister doing annoying things in your peripheral vision, you’re in the middle of the Minecraft world. Caves beckon, mobs advance, it’s all glorious. Hover Junkers is a wild free-for-all in wastelands that you’ll love. Lots of movement in playing this game, and ships that are steampunk beauties. Loads of fun! Sportsbar VR lets you play pool, darts, chess, air hockey – lots of pub games. And you can compete against AI or your friends anywhere in the world. It’s the perfect way to chill out and you don’t have to leave your house. Dear Esther slows it down a bit. It’s not a game where you do battle with guns blazing. It’s a visually stunning ghost story with you on a Scottish island and a lurking mystery to solve. Or not. Assetto Corsa is a racing game that is popular primarily because it is easily modified and customized. Reliefband wearable device provides fast control of nausea, retching, and vomiting associated with the motion sickness associated with VR.
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Crazy Carnival Rides
Nausea, cold sweat, even retching and vomiting—they’re all symptoms of motion sickness and they can pop up at inconvenient times, right? For those of us who live with motion sickness, we know what to expect in the car or on a boat, or in an airplane. But what about . . . at the carnival? The teacup ride that little kids love—oof. The base of the ride goes around in a big circle, and each teacup on the base revolves independently. There’s a little wheel in the middle of each teacup that controls the spin of that cup. All it takes is one gleeful kid who’s determined to yank that wheel ‘round and ‘round, and there goes lunch! At the Stratosphere in Las Vegas, guests can pay to be strapped into a giant teeter-totter and thrown 27 feet over the edge of the casino, left to dangle face-down 866 feet above the Strip. A Devil’s Wheel looks simple enough. It’s a flat, slightly raised circular floor so many feet in diameter. Riders sit in the middle of the floor, which then spins faster and faster until they’re all tossed off, landing we’re not sure where but hopefully on a soft surface. Some people won’t hop on the rides because they’re scary as all get-out. That’s really the only reason one needs. And then there are those who love the thrill but end up puking because of, yep, motion sickness. We can’t stop the scary. It is what it is. But, Reliefband® helps control the nausea, retching, and vomiting associated with motion sickness. If you want to dangle over the Las Vegas Strip from atop a very tall casino, at least wear a Reliefband® on your wrist!
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Star Wars Day
“May the 4th be with you” is THE pun from Star Wars’ heyday. Granted, it’s an oldie, given that the original Star Wars debuted in 1977, but who cares? It’s Star Wars, for crying out loud. We love it because sci-fi is where you’ll find the dreams of tech that are now or will one day be our reality. There are 3D printing machines that can produce chocolate sculptures or body parts. Talk about the wow factor. They’re even available for home use. One touch on our smartphone screen, and we can see and talk to Uncle Tony who lives on the other side of the world. We call it FaceTime. Stormtroopers ride hoverbikes. This year a hoverbike is coming to market (please, Santa, pleeeeease). Robot maids — yep, they exist. OK, they’re not fast and in every home yet, but we’ll get there. We’re on Mars. Well, the Curiosity Rover is, and we’re planning an in-person visit. Exploring the galaxy! We live in a world of burgeoning technology. It’s flat-out exciting. In our part of the wearable tech industry, you can now slip on a Reliefband® and quickly control symptoms of nausea, retching, and vomiting associated with motion sickness, morning sickness, or even VR-related motion sickness. Hey, that’s another tech advancement — VR! Just slip on a headset and be transported to any world, any place. Kind of like a holodeck. Yes, that’s Star Trek, but it’s still cool.
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Tulip Time – Road Trip!
If you’re a tulip lover, this is your time of year. Tulips are showing off all over the country, and that says “road trip” to us. Americans have always been in love with cars and winding roads, particularly when the weather is fine. We found tulip festivals dotted around the country—hope there’s one near you. If you live around New York, Albany hosts a Mother’s Day weekend full of tulips. This year is the 69th annual event, and they even have a Tulip Ball if you’re so inclined. Pella, Iowa, transforms into the Netherlands for their 82nd annual Tulip Time Festival, beating out Albany by more than a decade. For three days, you can clomp around in wooden shoes, eat Dutch treats, and party like it’s 1894. In Lehi, Utah, the fields are covered with hundreds of thousands of tulips. Once you’re “tuliped out” you can run a half marathon, go to a swing dance, listen to the Lyceum Philharmonic, and gorge on food, food, food. The tulip festival in Skagit Valley, Washington, isn’t in one patch. It’s spread out over miles and miles, and the field locations change every year. Think of it as a festival/scavenger hunt. Wherever you’re headed this year, pack snacks and liquids, and wear sturdy shoes for hiking over and around acres of tulips. Oh, and if you hear “road trip” and think “carsick,” we have you covered. Slip Reliefband® on your wrist and turn it on, then forget about the nausea, retching, and vomiting of motion sickness. We take care of that for you, without drugs and without delay!
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VR – Not Just For Games
Virtual Reality (VR) is tops with gamers, but it’s also used in ways unimagined just a few short years ago. VR simulations in the military enhance the training one goes through to become a medic or a pilot, a tank driver or even a combatant. Businesses use VR simulations to improve skillsets such as machine operation, sales, or understanding and use of a product. Teachers find the world of Virtual Reality to be a boon to the translation of concepts, and it’s just a fun way to learn. Who doesn’t want to interact with whales during fifth period? But, VR-related nausea can put the kibosh on the excitement and benefit of experiencing the world through Virtual Reality. Reliefband® offers a quick, natural way to treat the symptoms of nausea, retching, and vomiting sometimes associated with motion sickness from playing or training in the virtual world. So go, have fun in VR—jump out of airplanes, swim with turtles, or float in space. Do it all and bonus, no puking!
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Say Yes To Travel, No To Motion Sickness
Traveling adds depth and perspective to our lives. Saying yes to travel opportunities is fun! But motion sickness, the kind some of us experience when we fly, or ride in a car or boat, can be enough to stop us from going across town—forget about going across the country (or the world). The answer is simple: Reliefband®. Worn on the wrist, it’s a fast, drug-free way to treat the nasty symptoms of nausea, retching, and vomiting that keep us from living life as we’d like. Once our motion sickness is under control, the world is ours to explore. Following is a bucket list of destinations we’ve started for 2017. We invite you to add to it in the comments. Mont St.-Michel is an old abbey off of the coast of Normandy, France. When the tide comes in, it’s an island surrounded by water, seeming to float on the sea. Once the tide is out, you can make your way there and walk the paths of monks. Next winter, we hope to sleep on ice at the ICEHOTEL in Sweden. It’s a work of art, rebuilt every year in a few short weeks. However, we hear they’re going to attempt to keep it open year-round, with the help of solar panels to keep it cool. Either way, we can’t wait. The Ithaa Undersea Restaurant in the Maldives is stunning. You dine under a glass dome surrounded by, yes, the sea. Stingrays and other creatures of the deep are your companions for a pricey but once-in-a-lifetime meal. Whitehaven Beach in Australia is blindingly white. Hence the name. They say it’s 89% silica, which accounts for its color. We don’t know if that’s true, but who doesn’t want to walk on such soft, white sand? The Arashiyama Bamboo Grove in Japan is a magical place in which to stroll. The sound of the wind making its way through the bamboo is unique and not to be missed. Well, this is our bucket list so far. What’s on your list? Remember, this is the year to change your life. Treat the symptoms of motion sickness, and go! Hope to see you out there.
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Nausea And The Bad Old Days
At Reliefband®, we’re well-versed in the treatment of nausea, retching, and vomiting related to motion and morning sickness. We’re proud to bring our wearable technology to market—a device which provides drug-free, fast relief from the nausea, retching, and vomiting indicated above. Because this is our world, we have an intense interest in not only what’s happening today in the area of relief of nausea and vomiting, but also in the treatment history of these symptoms. Rachael Russell, a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester in the UK, wrote her thesis on the subject: Nausea and Vomiting: A History of Signs, Symptoms and Sickness in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Her work is thorough and quite long (it is a thesis, after all), but we recommend it if the topic interests you. We do want to share just a few of the fascinating bits that explain how nausea was treated back in the day, though we are not advocating for these practices. With apologies to Ms. Russell for not sharing her entire manuscript: While Darwin tried raisins, others stuck to tea and dry biscuits. A light, bland diet was the favoured [food] option. Brandy was a seemingly popular [alcohol] option . . . Dry champagne, sometimes iced, was also chosen to combat nausea and vomiting at sea, as it was considered able to revive energy and be retained in the stomach when everything else caused irritation. According to Dr Andrew Wilson . . . the reason for its success was its carbonic acid gas content. Frederic Carpenter Skey (1798-1872), a surgeon at St Bartholomew’s, recommended to the sea-cadet Henry Knight (b. 1848) that he use quinine – ‘more efficient if given in port or sherry about 2 thirds of a glass.’ According to John King, a surgeon aboard a Nantucket whaler, he kept ‘ether’, a teaspoonful of which he mixed in wine for treating sea-sickness. There were also numerous patent remedies that passengers could choose from . . . These remedies often contained alcohol, sugar and opium. Most remedies were to be ingested and were thought to act directly on the abdomen. There were far fewer local applications, such as that patented by Pierre Molinari in 1858. Molinari claimed to prevent sea-sickness by adding to vinegar the following ingredients: rue, thyme, mint, rosemary, absinthe, turmeric, the green husks of walnuts, rocou, poppy heads and potash. Wadding was then soaked in this mixture and placed on the pit of the stomach. In his 1857 lectures on digestion Thomas King Chambers suggested that ‘[t]he best remedy for healthy persons to take is very frothy bottled porter: if it does not in every case prevent the vomiting, yet the prostration afterwards is certainly avoided, and the ejecta are not so disagreeable.’ Chambers also recommended chloroform to prevent the violent straining during vomiting, though lamented that it would not prevent nausea. In his text on How to Travel, for example, Thomas Knox advised his readers that: Many persons will tell you that it is an excellent thing to be sea-sick, as you are so much better for it afterwards. If you are a sufferer you will do well to accept their statements as entirely correct, since you are thereby consoled and soothed, and the malady doesn’t care what you think about it, one way or another. Chemical formulas were rarely noted to have been successful. Creosote, an anti-emetic, was often mentioned. However, it was also criticised as, given in the wrong doses, it could make the sickness worse. James Henry Bennet argued in 1857 that chemical treatments were more commonly unsuccessful because they were expelled from the stomach before having the chance to work. He therefore suggested opium injections into the rectum. This was able to bypass the stomach and act directly on the nerves, encouraging sleep. And with that, we draw this peek into the past to a close. We’re grateful that science has brought us to this point! With a Reliefband® on the wrist, we simply push a button to treat our symptoms. Thanks to Rachael Russell for the historical perspective.
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