Does Acupressure Help With Nausea? What the Research Shows

Does acupressure help with nausea? The honest answer is that stimulating the PC6 point on the inner wrist appears to reduce nausea and vomiting after surgery, though the trials behind that finding are of low certainty, while the evidence for nausea in early pregnancy and during chemotherapy is thinner and less consistent. This review walks through what the main Cochrane reviews actually measured and reported. For a broader introduction to the practice itself, start with the acupressure modality overview.

What the studies looked at

Almost all of this research centers on one point, PC6 (also written P6, or Nei Guan), on the inner forearm just above the wrist crease. Cochrane reviewers grouped acupressure and wristbands with other ways of stimulating the same spot, including needle acupuncture and electrical stimulation, so a finding about PC6 stimulation is not automatically a finding about pressing your own wrist.

For nausea after surgery, the 2015 Cochrane review by Lee and colleagues included 59 randomized trials with 7,667 participants. It compared PC6 stimulation with sham stimulation, with six anti-nausea drugs (metoclopramide, cyclizine, prochlorperazine, droperidol, ondansetron and dexamethasone), and, in combination with drugs, against drugs alone. Outcomes were nausea, vomiting, rescue medication and side effects. A 2025 update used a network meta-analysis of 77 trials (1986 to 2022, 9,847 participants, mostly adults) and separated needle-based methods from noninvasive ones such as wristbands.

For chemotherapy, the most recent Cochrane review (Ezzo and colleagues, 2006) pooled 11 trials with 1,247 participants. It accepted any method, including needles, electrical stimulation, magnets and acupressure, and every trial gave anti-nausea drugs alongside. For early pregnancy, the 2015 Cochrane review by Matthews and colleagues covered 41 trials with 5,449 women up to 20 weeks pregnant. It compared many approaches, including P6 acupressure, ear acupressure, acupuncture, ginger, vitamin B6 and drugs, and excluded the severe form, hyperemesis gravidarum.

What they found

After surgery, the 2015 review found PC6 stimulation lowered the risk of nausea compared with sham by about a third (risk ratio 0.68, 40 trials, 4,742 participants), vomiting by about 40 percent (risk ratio 0.60) and rescue medication use by about a third (risk ratio 0.64). Compared with the six drugs, there was no difference in nausea (risk ratio 0.91) or vomiting (risk ratio 0.93). Adding PC6 stimulation to a drug reduced vomiting compared with the drug alone (risk ratio 0.56) but not nausea (risk ratio 0.79).

The 2025 update rated noninvasive methods, which include acupressure and wristbands, separately. Compared with sham, noninvasive PC6 stimulation may reduce nausea after surgery (risk ratio 0.67) and vomiting (risk ratio 0.58), and may reduce the need for rescue medication (risk ratio 0.60), all rated low confidence. Noninvasive PC6 plus anti-nausea drugs probably reduced rescue medication use compared with sham (risk ratio 0.44, moderate confidence, indirect comparisons only).

For chemotherapy, the 2006 review found that acupoint stimulation of all kinds combined reduced acute vomiting (risk ratio 0.82) but not the severity of acute or delayed nausea. Looking at acupressure on its own, it reduced the average severity of acute nausea by a small amount (standardized mean difference minus 0.19) but did not change acute vomiting or delayed symptoms. Noninvasive electrical stimulation did not help. The authors noted that self-administered acupressure appeared to offer some protection against acute nausea and is easy to learn.

For early pregnancy, the 2015 review called the evidence for P6 acupressure, ear acupressure and P6 acustimulation limited, and found no significant benefit from acupuncture. It concluded that high-quality evidence for any particular approach is lacking, adding that this is not the same as saying the approaches do not work.

How strong the evidence is

The surgical evidence is the most extensive, but it is not high quality. In the 2015 review, only two of the 59 trials were at low risk of bias in every domain, and 25 were at high risk in at least one. Because results also varied substantially between trials, the reviewers rated the comparison with sham as low-quality evidence. The comparison with drugs was rated moderate quality. A statistical check called trial sequential analysis suggested enough sham-controlled trials had been done to show a benefit, and the authors said no further sham trials were needed.

The 2025 update rated most of its findings low or very low confidence, with high risk of bias mainly from selective reporting of outcomes. Neither surgical review found signs of publication bias in its funnel plots. The chemotherapy evidence is weaker: 11 trials pooled with a fixed-effect model, small effects, no placebo control in the acupressure studies, and a review that Cochrane withdrew in 2014 without a replacement. The pregnancy review could not pool most outcomes because trials differed too much, judged study quality mixed, and found almost half of trials did not fully report all planned outcomes.

Limits and open questions

Several caveats from the reviews themselves are worth keeping in view. The surgical findings combine many techniques, so the estimate for acupressure alone rests on the noninvasive subgroup of the 2025 update, at low confidence. The finding of no difference from anti-nausea drugs is not a reason to swap one for the other. The 2015 authors concluded that further trials comparing PC6 with drugs would be futile at showing a difference, and that the evidence for combining PC6 with drug prevention was inconclusive and needed better trials.

For chemotherapy, the 2006 authors called for studies in people whose symptoms persist despite modern anti-nausea drugs, and the review has not been updated since its withdrawal. For pregnancy, the review excluded hyperemesis gravidarum and found little information on maternal and fetal adverse outcomes, or on psychological, social and economic effects, across all the approaches studied. None of these reviews examined motion sickness, and none established how PC6 stimulation might work.

What this means in practice

Acupressure for nausea is best seen as a low-cost, low-risk extra rather than a replacement for medicine. If you are having surgery, you can ask your anesthesia team whether a PC6 wristband fits with the nausea prevention they already plan. During chemotherapy, keep to the anti-nausea plan your oncology team prescribes, and mention any wristband or self-pressure you add.

In pregnancy, check with your midwife or doctor first, and get care promptly if you cannot keep food or fluids down. If you want help finding the point and learning technique, you can browse the Gyfts practitioner directory or explore related approaches.