I electrocuted my own vagus nerve every day for a week to find out if brain health wearables are worth the hype

Date:
Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Description:
Can I shock my stress away? I dove into the wild world of neurotech.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter You could be forgiven for thinking that most wearable-tech categories have come as far as they're ever going to. All smartwatches look the same now , and that form factor isnt
going away anytime soon. It's a similar story with smart rings, with slightly thinner being the main selling point of the Oura Ring 5 . And the screenless Whoop tracker has given birth to a bunch of copycats, including the Fitbit Air, and most recently the Garmin Cirqa .

When you think of wearable tech, you normally think of some sort of fitness tracker. But there is an area of wearables thats still in flux, as categories do before theres a consensus on what works: neurotech. Neurotech devices are generally wearable technology to monitor, or temporarily alter, our brain chemistry for optimal performance or to treat neurological injuries, such as post-traumatic stress disorder or depression.

Theyre also being used to improve our brains to rest harder and focus longer. Our writer Becca Caddy recently wrote about the dangerously addictive thrills of 'over-optimization' , so its no surprise to see the out-there concept of rewiring the brain being embraced by the cult of biohacking. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: (Image credit: Neurosity) Nootropics mind-enhancing drugs are promoted heavily on podcasts, with brands like Gorilla Mind and Alpha Brain enjoying airtime on popular bro-science
platforms like The Joe Rogan Experience to help get cognitively dialed . Away from pharmacological solutions, multi-millionaire longevity biohacker Bryan Johnson uses Nurosym, an electrical vagus nerve stimulation device, to make [his] body more parasympathetic, more chill. Its Nurosym that Ive been using this week. There are other wearables out there that promise to do all sorts
of things the Neurosity Crown for example (pictured above), promises to improve concentration through neuroadaptive meditation, measuring your brainwaves and playing music to that pattern to improve focus during work.
All while looking like the sort of thing you might see Patrick Stewart wear
in the X-Men films. You may like How wearable tech made me obsessed with optimization 3 discreet, screenless fitness trackers I've personally tested, and where to buy them on Prime Day I've been using Google Health's new AI Coach for a week here's 3 things I liked about the Fitbit Premium revamp
(and 2 I really didn't)

The Muse 2 headband is a meditation aid that uses electroencephalography
(EEG) sensors to read your brain activity and provide personalized meditation guidance, in much the same way as a smartwatch might read your heart rate and offer workout suggestions.

The vagus nerve, however, is a key target for brain health. Proper
stimulation of the vagus nerve is said to offer all sorts of benefits, treating conditions as varied as depression, anxiety, inflammation, bipolar disorder, obesity, POTS, and Alzheimer's. For people without those
conditions, vagus nerve stimulation can improve sleep quality, regulate
stress and improve relaxation overall, ensuring you're well-rested and ready to tackle life's challenges. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from
us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

There's unconfirmed but promising research suggesting that you may be able to stimulate the vagus nerve yourself through practices such as meditation and cold exposure which might explain my predilection for cold showers , as perhaps Ive been unconsciously hacking away at my brain all this time.

But what if I got a wearable to do it for me? I decided to try Nurosym myself for a week, to see if I could really begin to hack my brain better.

The vagus nerve stimulation device costs a whopping $699 / 599 (around AU$1,300), and looks quite stripped-back for a device of this price. It consists of a fairly simple handheld remote, an attached earpiece with a
clamp to fix to your tragus (the small piece of cartilage outside your ear) and a charging cable. Theres mercifully no app or phone connection to speak of; everything happens on-device, which actually goes some way to making me trust it more, as its not collecting any data about me. What to read next The best sleep trackers 2026: Rings, earbuds and sensors that help you sleep smarter Oura Ring 5 review: impressive wellness tracking, but read the fine print This Signal smart ring might have cracked cuffless blood pressure readings (Image credit: Future) For a long time, neuromodulation has largely meant invasive procedures or treatment delivered in specialist environments, Dr Greta Dalle Luche, PhD., Nurosyms head of science, tells me. Nurosym demonstrates how this science can be translated into non-invasive technology that fits into peoples everyday lives.

As well as being a doctor in biochemistry, Dalle Luche is also a former professional surfer, so she knows all about optimizing for peak performance. She explains that Nurosym is all about taking evidence-led neuromodulation
out of the clinical space and turning it into accessible technology. A lot of clinical tests have been done on this device, and its advertised as the
worlds most studied vagus nerve stimulator with $10 million invested in over 60 independent research papers, backed by notable universities and health bodies worldwide.

To use it, you moisten your tragus, fix the clamp, then adjust the signal on the remote turning it up until you feel a light tingling sensation. Thats
the electricity pulsing through your ear to your vagus nerve, stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system to activate your bodys rest and digest response.

It seems like as good a place as any to start. I wet my ear, clamped it onto myself and sat quietly, letting the tingles of electricity wash down my ear canal and into my brain. Nurosym guidelines, and reports on the r/vagusnerve subreddit (because of course theres a subreddit), suggest that it can take anything from a few days to months to feel the effects, which are said to include a reduction in depressive or anxiety-related symptoms, better sleep, and better-quality rest and relaxation. These claims are anecdotal, and user-dependent, and the results are subjective, with no objective measure of they actually work or produce meaningful results, certainly in a short amount of time such as a week.

Dalle Luche tells me that factors such as an individuals underlying vagal tone, or in other words, the health of their autonomic nervous system, influence the proportion of the response to the device". So it's possible
that I may end up not having a proportional, or significant, response. (Image credit: Future) Nonetheless, I did my best to empirically measure my bodys responses to this new technology, monitoring my sessions on a Garmin Cirqa fitness tracker as if it was a workout, and wearing it to bed nightly to monitor sleep quality and heart-rate variability.

You can watch our video review of the Garmin Cirqa below: I spent a week
with the Garmin Cirqa, and its my clear winner over Whoop and Fitbit Air - YouTube Watch On According to the Garmin, the stimulation did have some effect. There could be any number of contributing factors for this, but after spending 15 minutes at rest to settle my heart, I fired up the Nurosym and monitored my heart rate over a 25-minute session, and I did see a decrease in spikes my heart rate as the session went on. Note the regularity in the
middle there, too, between the 10 and 17-minute marks a clear indication
that something was working. (Image credit: Future) Across the week while
using the device, I also saw a general improvement in sleep quality and drastically rising heart-rate variability, as measured here via my Garmin. Im not sure I saw any immediate, dramatic improvement in focus or relaxation,
but the graphs were moving in the right direction.

Whether this is partly due to the sessions enforcing at least 30 minutes of screenless, conscious relaxation time each day, so that my nervous system was deliberately being calmed, or whether its due to the device, Im not sure. But Ill take the W, as the kids say. (Image credit: Future) For $700 / 600 / AU$1,300, is 'seemed to work' enough? When I asked about the high price of
the device, Nurosyms head of science Dr Greta Dalle Luche said its price does not reflect the physical device alone.

It reflects more than a decade of scientific research and development, our proprietary technology, extensive continuous testing to ensure safety and maintenance of regulatory certification, as well as continued investment in clinical research, she told me. That makes a direct product-for-product comparison with lower-cost non-validated wellness gadgets difficult.

When people buy Nurosym, they have the certainty of holding in their hands something that works, and that comes with very little risk.

While the results have been inconclusive so far, I've seen enough to suggest that something is happening here, so I'll continue electrocuting my brain for a while yet to see if I achieve more definitive results. Wearable neurotechnology is still in its infancy, but its a technology that's on the rise, and I imagine, now that Nurosym has done the hard work of all that proprietary testing, there will be more low-strength vagus nerve-stimulation devices hitting the market in the near future.

Im interested in seeing where the category goes. If companies like Nurosym
can bring down prices, and make the technology more accessible, a wearable that improves your quality of relaxation and which doesnt harvest your data to feed big tech via an AI-powered app sounds like a win in my book. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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