How to get relieve from nausea applying acupressure therapy?

Nausea, with or without vomiting, is a miserable feeling. There are many condition when you can feel vomiting like as motion sickness, morning sickness, cancer treatments, and surgery anesthesia etc.

There are numerous causes of nausea and vomiting. But treating nausea means fixing the cause of the nausea. Nausea and vomiting are symptoms of an underlying disease and not a specific illness. Nausea is the sensation that the stomach wants to empty itself, while vomiting (emesis) or throwing up, is the act of forcible emptying of the stomach.

Vomiting is a violent act in which the stomach has to overcome the pressures that are normally in place to keep food and secretions within the stomach. The stomach almost turns itself inside out - forcing itself into the lower portion of the esophagus (the tube that connects the mouth to the stomach) during a vomiting episode.

Practitioners of Chinese medicine techniques have long used stimulation of points on the wrists through acupuncture or acupressure to relieve nausea.

How to find acupressure point and start pressing it? 

• Take your index finger and middle finger and place them on your wrist at the base of your palm to measure where your nausea acupressure point is. Find your acupressure point -- two or three finger widths down from the top crease in the wrist, centered in the groove between the two large tendons. This is known as the P6 point (or "inner gate").
• Take your thumb and index or middle finger and press firmly on the points on both sides of the wrist when you feel nauseous. You should feel relief in 10-30 seconds. Sometimes, however, it can take up to five minutes. 
• Tap your wrists together gently at the acupressure points while taking deep breaths. You can alternate with tapping the outsides of your hands together.

 Get a wristband that applies pressure to the correct spot. They usually have a knob or flat button positioned over the acupressure point. You might feel relief as soon as you put it on, but after your body grows accustomed to the pressure, you'll need to press down on the acupressure point for extra relief.

Medical scientists don’t know for sure how acupressure wristbands relieve nausea and vomiting. But the theories they have so far point to two possible explanations of how BioBands works -- The first is that using an acupressure wristband interrupts the nervous system signals that bring about nausea symptoms in the body. The second is that continual pressure to the P-6 acupressure points causes the release of endorphins, neurotransmitters that act as a natural painkiller within the body.

Wristband applies continuous acupressure to the P-6 acupressure point at the wrist to relieve nausea and vomiting from motion sickness, morning sickness, cancer treatments, and surgery anesthesia.

"The idea is to use it before you start vomiting," says acupuncturist Joseph M. Helms, M.D. Apply pressure to the webbing between your thumb and index finger on either hand. Use firm, deep pressure and a rapid massaging movement for several minutes, he says.

Using the same kind of motion and pressure, Dr. Helms says, rub with your thumb or thumbnail on the top of your foot between the tendons of the second and third toes. With any luck, your nausea will pass after a few minutes.

Picture and points are courtesy of 'wikiHow'

More links:
* Acupressure Wristbands Help Cancer Patients