[odevans]

So one of the users claims that it cured his hangover?

I'm not even going to touch that one.

 

[Nirmalanow]

I talked to someone who was at CES who is heavily into neuro-technology. But, he said that he could not even get close to their booth because it was mobbed with people. That suggests that it was having some kind of effect on people and that word of mouth was driving a lot of interest right there at the show.
 
I pre-ordered one to see what, if anything, there is to it. It does have a 14 day return window.

 

[disastermouse]

So...I got mine a few days ago. I've been using it nearly non-stop, several times a day. The effect is subtle, but it's there. Sometimes I have to listen at high intensity for all 45 minutes and only start feeling it at around the half-hour mark. I'm also pretty sensitive.

My wiring is pretty screwed up by early childhood trauma and I'm anxious all the time with peaks around material security. Benzodiazepines are supposedly contraindicated for my diagnosis (this isn't really true, but the local mental health zoo is 'treat by number'), so I've been taking an herbal product called SECURUS. It's got kava, GABA, passionflower, and bacopa. I've had help with extreme anxiety using a very powerful water-process kava extract from hawaii but although it kicks in quick and is very obviously effective, it doesn't last long. It's best for severe anxiety or panic attacks. It's also very expensive.

So...SECURUS has taken the peaks off my anxiety, which is great. I didn't even realize how anxious I was until I'd started taking it for a few days. However, there's still a sort of 'baseline' anxiety that, although more manageable, is still there.

About the Nervana:

1. The earbuds are not high-quality sound. Bass is really not there.
2. Not everyone is going to feel comfortable with the feeling of little shocks in your left ear for minutes at a time.
3. Yeah, it definitely works. I'm near the end of a 45 minute session now and I'm sort of giggly.
4. I've been sleeping like a corpse since I started using a session before I go to bed. It won't put me to sleep if I use it off my 'natural' clock, which is now tuned for sleeping during the day, but when I finally DO sleep, I sleep deeply for eight hours.
5. Earbud fit is required. I've difinitely gotten both better effects and better sound since using the largest buds that come with it.
6. About those buds, they use a very specific kind of earbud, especially for the left ear. There's a blue dot on the left ones and if you don't use that earbud, the product won't work. It's semi-conductive.
7. About the sound quality - once the effect really kicks in, your music will start to 'sound better' due to the way you feel. I've rarely had music stuck in my head like I do after listening to it with Nervana. It certainly won't replace my good headphones, but it makes the poor sound quality a little more bearable.
8. You can run it on preset programs without music but I haven't done it yet.
9. Buy rechargable 9-volts and a charger. The original 9-volt that comes with it lasted about 4-5 days of heavy use.
10. Saline. If you mist the left earbud with saline, the stimulus is more powerful. They provide a refillable sprayer with the product but they don't provide saline because they don't want breakage of the saline container to ruin the unit. Contact lens saline works, but I'm an RN and I'm always accidentally taking sterile saline syringes home. Now I have something to do with them besides throwing them away.


My longterm hope for Nervana is that I can somehow semi-permanently tone my vagus nerve in such a way that my parasympathetic nervous system counteracts the screwy wiring I built up as a young person due to unstable...well, everything. Doing it with the herbal product and Nervana in the meantime is really proving helpful. I've been fighting my anxiety for so long that my horizons (personal, professional, artistic, etc) have all been stunted and the world has been mostly grey for quite a long time. The last few days have been better. Work isn't nearly as painful.

Overall, I'm happy with the product - but not for its sound qualities.

 

[semaj8james]

That's a really interesting review you have and I'm glad the product isn't bunk. If only there was a way to use my current IEM's with the device!
 
Nice to see a Head-Fi member review them!

 

[disastermouse]

That's a really interesting review you have and I'm glad the product isn't bunk. If only there was a way to use my current IEM's with the device!

Nice to see a Head-Fi member review them!

I used them last night and I was pretty giggly. It's not really a 'high', you are still you, you're just an amazingly cheerful you. You know how you feel a little bit loopy when you laugh really hard for an extended period of time? It's kind of like that.

Up until last night, it hadn't been as intense. I did have the intensity a smidge higher than usual and I listened to fairly 'active' music, so that may have been part of it.

 

[mixolyd]

I wonder how this stacks up against the vagus nerve stimulators that are approved for medical use (treating migraine, fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, dysautonomic depression etc).  It can take weeks, months and years for the full effect to be had in the complex chronic conditions (using the medical stimulators) so there's good reason to think that it's worth sticking with it for a while if you are getting some kind of benefit from it.

 

[disastermouse]

I wonder how this stacks up against the vagus nerve stimulators that are approved for medical use (treating migraine, fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, dysautonomic depression etc).  It can take weeks, months and years for the full effect to be had in the complex chronic conditions (using the medical stimulators) so there's good reason to think that it's worth sticking with it for a while if you are getting some kind of benefit from it.

I have no experience with the medical devices, so I don't know how to compare. They explicitly say that it's not a medical device, but I think that has a lot to do with the rigorous trials needed for approval to sell a medical device. For now, it's just nice to get giggly and cheerful on a daily basis.

 

[Nirmalanow]

I also tried this, and I am sad to say that after two weeks of pretty regular use (often twice a day), I have not noticed any effect at all. Maybe I am already as happy as you can get.

 
So it is going back under their return policy.

I will second the comment about the sound quality being pretty bad. There truly is no bass with these, but then I am used to this setup which means I am used to a lot of bass:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/756810/full-body-headphone-sound-yes

The company says they are working on earbuds that have better sound, but the current earbuds were so bad that I never listened to them and just used the preset program to control the electrical stimulation. I was able to use my large over ear headphones for some music to listen to while the unit was running.