Experience with Sea-Bands?

[Starwind]

Thanks to you and Seamama for the additional information. I don't really have access to PubMEd (and probably wouldn't understand much if I did), but it is interesting to see the studies. I'm not sure that there are any well conducted studies that are definitive at this point. You would think that the manufacturers of Sea bands and similar would make money available for good quality studies, but maybe they sell enough without any evidence that they work. -- Suzanne

You are correct that threre does not appear to be aa lot of good quality studies of Sea Bands for motion sickness -- though there are some. It appears, especially recently, that Sea Bands for nausea and vomiting of pregnancy or in chemotherapy patients have many more studies and the studies are better done (e.g. control groups!).

If you do a search at scholar.google.ca for "sea band" "motion sickness" most of them are the use of sea bands for other types of nausea and vomiting. For example there is this one "Acupressure in the control of migraine-associated nausea" http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10072-012-1069-y . There is also a Cochrane Review of its use in three different nausea and vomiting conditions (but not motion sickness for that review; http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2006.12.489 ).

Clicking on the links in most cases will get you at least the abstract if not the full study (for the migraine one you get the full study).

For motion sickness, from the Google Scholar results: here is an abstract of a study done in Iran on the "Effect of Sea-Band on Prevention of Nausea & Vomiting in Military Personnel at Sea": http://www.militarymedj.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-1-9&slc_lang=en&sid=1&sw=Military+Personnel They found it worked better than placebo, but it was not a 100% "cure" (i.e. some people still had symptoms, but much fewer than with placebo).

Finally, here is a clinical trial that is in the recruiting patients stage: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00550251 It will study "Does Acupressure Help Reduce Nausea and Vomiting in Palliative Care Patients? Formal Study" (the accupressure being Sea Bands). So at least some studies are still being done.

SW

 

[SuzanneSLO]

You are correct that threre does not appear to be aa lot of good quality studies of Sea Bands for motion sickness -- though there are some. It appears, especially recently, that Sea Bands for nausea and vomiting of pregnancy or in chemotherapy patients have many more studies and the studies are better done (e.g. control groups!).

If you do a search at scholar.google.ca for "sea band" "motion sickness" most of them are the use of sea bands for other types of nausea and vomiting. For example there is this one "Acupressure in the control of migraine-associated nausea" http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10072-012-1069-y . There is also a Cochrane Review of its use in three different nausea and vomiting conditions (but not motion sickness for that review; http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2006.12.489 ).

Clicking on the links in most cases will get you at least the abstract if not the full study (for the migraine one you get the full study).

For motion sickness, from the Google Scholar results: here is an abstract of a study done in Iran on the "Effect of Sea-Band on Prevention of Nausea & Vomiting in Military Personnel at Sea": http://www.militarymedj.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-1-9&slc_lang=en&sid=1&sw=Military+Personnel They found it worked better than placebo, but it was not a 100% "cure" (i.e. some people still had symptoms, but much fewer than with placebo).

SW

Thank you! -- Suzanne