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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Thank You, Doctors!

Did you know there’s a day set aside for doctors? In 1990, President Bush signed into law that 30 March 1991 would be “National Doctors Day.” A version of this holiday has been going on since the ‘30s, with a red carnation being the gift of choice for your favorite doctor. We want to say thank you to all doctors for their selfless service. You spend your lives working to improve the quality of life for the rest of us, and we’re grateful. This is a challenging but exciting time to be a physician. The world of medicine is exploding with technology that is making our Star Trek dreams come true. Virtual reality allows medical students to practice medicine on virtual patients. Imagine the scope of work they can accomplish, as they get hands-on experience with every ailment, injury, and disease. All without risk of harm. Wearables are galloping onto the market. Reliefband® (doctor-recommended) treats the nausea, retching, and vomiting associated with morning and motion sickness. Other wearables count your steps and your heartbeats, track your temperature, and even measure your insulin resistance. 3D bioprinting is cranking out blood vessels, skin, and one day in the not too distant future, hearts. We’re proud to be a part of the scientific and medical community. To the doctors who serve in universities, research labs, combat hospitals, clinics, and places of healing both rural and urban: We hope you had a wonderful Doctors Day!

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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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Spring Break!

Spring break. Spring break! Two words that, when put together, make every college student’s heart happy. Where are you going? Cancun, South Padre Island, Daytona Beach, the Bahamas—the list of places with warm water and miles of soft sand is nearly endless. Not everybody follows the trail of conch shells for an unforgettable spring break. Skiing and après-ski shindigs make for a fine break from school. Wherever you’re going, there are a few items aside from food, water, and clothing that you don’t want to forget: Headphones/earbuds Antibacterial ointment Bandages Student ID (gets you great discounts) Passport Sunscreen Ibuprofen (or whatever you take as a pain killer) Medications Waterproof camera Reliefband (drug-free treatment for nausea/vomiting associated with motion sickness) Hat (bad hair days) Portable charger Finally, bring cash and a credit card because, without doubt, you’ll forget to pack something! Oh, and have fun!

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Ski Lifts, Elevators, And Motion Sickness, Oh My!

Motion sickness happens when one part of your body senses that you’re moving, and another part of your body does not sense movement. Symptoms may include nausea, cold sweats, vomiting, and possibly a headache. It’s never fun. For instance, when you’re riding in an elevator your inner ear senses movement, but your eyes don’t see any movement. Some people will feel nauseated when they get off the elevator. Motion sickness. Or for those particularly sensitive to motion sickness, riding an escalator can cause problems. The eyes see movement, but the inner ear says we’re holding still. Nausea may ensue during or after the ride. Ski lifts are similar to escalators – our eyes see that we’re moving, but our inner ear says we’re not. That conflict causes us to experience motion sickness. Some people are so sensitive, they can think about a time they had motion sickness and feel it all over again. Then there are those lucky individuals who are never bothered by motion sickness. They can sit on their bunk below deck and read a book in the middle of a storm . . . while their boat moves up and down 20 foot waves and not feel a hint of nausea. Hmmmm. Most of us will feel motion sickness given the right circumstances, and many of us feel it with annoying frequency. The good news is you don’t have to be at the mercy of your senses. Reliefband® is drug-free wearable tech that stops the symptoms of motion sickness before they can start. Slip it on, and go live your life.

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Morning Sickness Beyond Three Months

Giving birth and raising a child—there’s nothing like it, right? Starting or growing your family is what it’s all about. Humans are tribal by nature and we all want to be a part of a clan, our own clan. Pregnancy, on the other hand, can feel isolating. Your partner wants to help, your parents fuss and make casseroles, but at the end of the day, it’s you and Herbert or Harriet, your baby-to-be. Morning sickness, the nausea and (sometimes) vomiting that strikes multiple times throughout the day, can be pretty awful. But it’s considered by many doctors to be an indication that the placenta is developing as it should, so it’s a good thing. To the doctors, it’s a good thing. To you, not so much. The better news is that typically it’s gone after about 12 weeks, except when it’s not. Some pregnant women experience morning sickness during their entire pregnancy. There are a few things you can do to get through morning sickness, whether it lasts for 12 weeks or 40 weeks: Keep plain crackers by your bed and munch on them before you get up in the morning, or anytime during the night if you’re feeling peckish. Eat five to seven small meals spaced out over the day. Stay hydrated! Don’t stay in stuffy areas, and keep the air moving by opening a window or turning on a fan. Put on your Reliefband® before you get out of bed in the morning, and anytime you feel a hint of nausea coming on. Morning sickness can be managed, and the symptoms of nausea and vomiting can be prevented or treated by wearing a Reliefband®. You will at some point stop feeling nauseous and deliver Herbert or Harriet! One thing to consider: If your morning sickness seems excessive – you keep vomiting and food just won’t stay down – contact your healthcare provider. You may have hyperemesis gravidarum, and that requires medical attention.

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Winter Dreams Of Summer Days

It’s deep winter. Snow is piling up in parts of the country, and the miserable weather does not invite us to frolic outdoors. What are we to do? Simple. We cozy up by the fire and dream our dreams of summer. And nothing says summer like sailing. Sunlight sparkling on the water’s surface, almost blinding in its brilliance, and the constant spray of water keeping the deck cool beneath your feet. The best part—you’re traveling on the wind and dancing with nature. Sailing is terrifying, peaceful, physically difficult, and satisfying to the soul. Sailboats come in all sizes. As long as the boat has a mast and a piece of fabric to catch the wind, it’s a sailboat, and if you live near a big pond or lake, wide river or (gulp) the ocean, you can sail. But wait. This all sounds dreamy, right? Except for the fact that you get seasick? We feel your pain. Or should we say we feel your nausea! That’s why we do what we do. Reliefband® is FDA-cleared wearable tech that stops nausea associated with motion sickness before it starts, or if you left it too late, will quickly stop nausea and vomiting once you put the device on your wrist and turn it on. Here’s what Reliefband® user Ron Moore says, “I always got sick deep sea fishing. I bought one of these years ago and I was the only person in our group that didn’t get sick.” Can’t beat that! Don’t let preventable nausea stop you from grabbing life and living large. See you out there!

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