From the hunt for the philosopher’s stone to the snake oil salesmen of the Wild West, the history of medicine has had more than its fair share of fraudulent ‘cure-alls’.
So, when I first heard of a device that claimed to cure everything from depression to my rapidly deteriorating attention span, I was understandably sceptical.
To make things even stranger, this potential wonder-cure isn’t a pill, powder, or trendy new supplement.
Instead, the Nurosym is a £599 gadget that claims to rewire your nervous system – by zapping your ear.
MailOnline’s Wiliam Hunter bravely tested it out – and, as strange as it all might sound, he’s almost ready to believe the hype.
The Nurosym (remote pictured) claims to treat everything from depression and anxiety to post-Covid fatigue and poor irritable bowel syndrome by stimulating the vagus nerve
MailOnline reporter Wiliam Hunter used the device for weeks at home and in the office to put these health claims to the test
At first glance, Nurosym’s bold claims of universal wellness seem not only too good to be true, but also a little silly.
The company’s website promises that the device can treat anxiety, sleep problems, depressive thoughts, tinnitus, long-Covid, heart failure, digestive issues, chronic fatigue, and even irritable bowel syndrome.
That is all on top of a 35 per cent reduction in stress and anxiety and 19 per cent ‘improvement in sleep’.
These near-miraculous effects are achieved by sending small electrical impulses through the skin and into a key bundle of nerve fibres called the vagus nerve.
Since the tragus, a small part of the ear, contains a high concentration of vagus nerve fibres, the device can stimulate the nerve through the skin.
According to a statement sent to MailOnline by the team at Parasym, the company which makes the device, this sends ‘targeted signals to the brain, correcting the dysfunctional signals that contribute to disease states.’
While that description is a little fanciful, there is now a growing body of evidence backing up the idea that stimulating the vagus nerve can have a wide range of benefits.
In particular, vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has been successfully used to treat clinical depression through devices implanted within the neck.
The handheld device is sold for £599 and claims to use electrical impulses sent through the vagus nerves to correct the ‘dysfunctional signals’ which create illness
Dr Tiago da Silva Costa, a researcher from Newcastle University who studies vagus nerve stimulation, told MailOnline: ‘It seems that VNS can improve mood, improve the chances of being free of depression and reduce the chances of depression coming back.’
Additionally, research has found that VNS applied through the skin can ‘significantly reduce the symptoms of fatigue’ in patients with chronic immune-mediated diseases such as post-Covid syndrome.
Currently, the only FDA-approved uses for this technology are for treating opioid withdrawal and cluster headaches.
The Nurosym device is made up of a handheld controller, which doubles as a battery, and a cable which clips to the user’s ear
While I don’t suffer from any of these conditions, Parasym claims that the device would be good for me even as a relatively healthy person.
I was especially intrigued by the promise that using the device could improve my stress levels, help me focus and even boost my memory and cognition.
As a naturally forgetful person working an often busy job, I frequently struggle to stay alert throughout the workday.
If zapping myself in the ear is enough to keep the typos at bay during the post-lunch lull then this little box could really be a massive help.
Asked for his opinion on the matter, Dr Costa told me: ‘As a clinician, I don’t really have good reasons to recommend the use of VNS in healthy people outside of research trials.
‘Having said this, there is plenty of evidence that non-invasive VNS is very well tolerated and safe, both in clinical populations and in healthy volunteers.
‘So, I would also have no particular safety concerns.’
The battery part of the device is slim enough to fit in your pocket so you can use it as you walk around. Parasym says that you don’t need to sit still or change your activities at all while you shock your ear
While not the glowing endorsement I had hoped for, ‘no particular safety concerns’ seemed like a good enough green light to get started with my own experiments.
The Nurosym is made up of two parts: a palm-sized oval device which functions as a battery and controller, and a cable with a simple metal clip.
To use the device, the instructions say to take the clip, place it on the tragus and turn up the current until you feel a slight ‘comfortable’ pulsing.
Flicking on the device, I tentatively cranked up the power until I could feel a rhythmic throbbing in my ear.
Finding a comfortable level proved a little tricky as I found the sensation would often jump from imperceptible to feeling like my ear was about to explode.
But, after a little fiddling, I was able to get comfortable enough to sit through the half-hour treatment cycle.
Using the Nurosym, I felt an almost nervous, twitchy sense of energy like I’d had just the right amount of coffee.
The Nurosym comes with a travel pouch (pictured) to hold the controller, ear clip, and charging cable. This bag has held up well despite living inside a reporter’s backpack since May
To use Nurosym, the user attaches the metal clip (pictured) to their tragus. This allows the device to send electric currents into the vagus nerve through the ear
But at the same time, this burst of attentiveness came with none of caffeine’s usual attended anxiety.
Although the effects are subtle and a little hard to pin down, the more I used the device, the more pronounced the effects became.
After about five minutes of zapping my ear, I generally found myself to be calmer, less distracted, and a little less jittery.
In fact, in the weeks I used Nurosym while writing this review, I actually found myself reaching for it during the day as an effective way of managing stress.
This is because, as Dr Costa explains, the vagus nerve is ‘not just another nerve’.
By essentially turning down our bodies ‘fight or flight’ system, stimulating the vagus nerve reducing the effects of stress.
Research has found that using VINS can block the stress response of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
While there isn’t much research on how this affects people without psychiatric conditions, it’s possible that my feelings of calm were a product of the same mechanism.
Professor Douglas Bremner, director of the Neuroscience Research Unit at Emory Univerity School of Medicine, told MailOnline: ‘I think even healthy people could use it as an acute stress reduction tool.’
MailOnline’s reporter Wiliam Hunter puts the device to the test, sending electric currents into his nerves through the Nurosym’s clip
However, VNS has the potential to do a lot more than simply calm people down.
Professor Bremner says: ‘Not only does it sort of block the stress response. We also showed that it enhances memory.
‘If you were to stimulate yourself while you’re learning a list of words in a different language you would probably be able to enhance your ability to remember.’
In his own experiments, Professor Bremner gave PTSD patients a paragraph to read and asked them to recall as much of it as possible in 15 minutes.
By pairing stimulation with reading the paragraph, Professor Bremner found that the patients’ performance improved by around 99 per cent.
Feeling inspired by Professor Bremner’s comments, a few weeks into using the device I decided to put his claims to the test.
Using the flashcard app Quizlet I collected a randomised set of advanced Mandarin vocabulary – something I would have had no chance of knowing in advance.
I gave myself five minutes to memorise 10 new words and tested myself after a minute pause – awarding one point for remembering the meaning of a character and a point for remembering its pronunciation.
The Nurosym claims to produce its benefits by stimulating the vagus nerve (pictured) which runs from the skull and ears down into the chest where it spreads out into many of the body’s major organs (stock image)
In the first trial without using VNS I scored a fairly disappointing nine points out of 20.
After a short pause, I repeated the trial with a new set of words and hit a slightly less rubbish score of 11.
Setting up the Nurosym and bringing it up to a comfortable level, I let the simulation run for five minutes to ensure it had time to trigger any positive effects.
On my first trial memorising an entirely new set of terms while using VNS I was able to score 16 out of 20.
In my second test, almost unbelievably, I achieved a perfect score of 20 – memorising the full list with surprisingly little difficulty.
While vagus nerve stimulation has been used medically to treat depression and opioid anxiety, Parasym claims that its device can be used by anyone – whether they have these conditions or not
As someone who’s failed almost every language exam I’ve ever taken, that was an extremely surprising result.
On average, that means using Nurosym improved my score from 10 to 18 – an 80 per cent improvement.
Professor Bremner points out that by reducing stress, VNS might make it easier to concentrate and so improve learning.
Additionally, activating the vagus nerve stimulates the production of a brain chemical called noradrenaline within the hippocampus – a region associated with memory and learning.
Dr Costa says: ‘Noradrenaline is very important for mood regulation, being one of the targets of many effective and widely used antidepressant drugs. It could be that VNS modulates brain noradrenaline networks in important ways.’
Stimulating the vagus nerve has also been shown to improve neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to form new neural pathways.
However, how these changes cascade through the brain and what immediate impact this has is still uncertain.
While my test was obviously small and entirely unscientific, the striking improvement to my scores was fascinating – if a little troubling.
If using VNS has such a profound ability to improve learning, would it be fair to allow these in classrooms or exams?
Vagus nerve stimulation is used to treat epilepsy through an implanted device. MailOnline wanted to test whether the ear-based version was able to have any health benefits
To test the effects of VNS on memory, MailOnline reporter Wiliam Hunter attempted to memorise a series of totally unfamiliar Chinese words (left) – scoring points for recalling pronunciation and meaning (right). Across a short trial, Wiliam’s scores improved by 80 per cent
During Professor Bremner’s earliest experiments with VNS, which were funded by the American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), this was considered such a pressing question that a conference was held on the ethics of ‘enhancing normal human function’.
However, ethical conundrums aside, there still remains the question of whether this device is really worth its £600 price tag.
For that much money, even with the impressive results and scientific promise, I would find it hard to recommend this product.
Purely in terms of functionality I have absolutely no complaints about Nurosym as a product.
I found the interface to be clear and easy to use, the device never malfunctioned or failed, and the battery held up well over several days of use.
But as Dr Costa pointed out, there is so much we don’t know about how this affects healthy people and £600 is a lot of money for something that might not work.
While I enjoyed using the device as a stress relief tool, I still wonder whether a few deep breaths and some time outside could achieve a similar effect.
That being said, the potential for this device to enhance learning and study is tantalising.
For anyone who wants to learn a language or a new skill, an 80-99 per cent increase in memory scores could make a noticeable difference.
Given that there are no serious safety concerns, if you really want to get an edge in your studies £600 might feel like a reasonable investment.
For my own part, writing with electricity pulsing through my ear and Mandarin vocab still stuck in my head, that might be an investment I would be willing to make.
