Quell wearable promises to relieve your chronic pains

As expected, wearables are all the rage at CES 2015. And while most of them are about looking fancy and sending useful notifications to your wrist, there are also others whose goal is to keep you feeling healthy. Enter NeuroMetrix Inc.'s Quell, a wearable that attaches to your upper calf and promises to make chronic pains go away within 15 minutes of putting it on. Quell's OptiTherapy electrode-driven technology uses non-invasive nerve stimulation to make this possible, allowing it to provide "100 percent" prescription-free relief to anyone who uses it. NeuroMetrix says that Quell is capable of relieving different types of chronic aches, from nerve pain to lower back problems.

Here's how it works: Quell stimulates the sensory nerves in your calf, then sends neural pulses to your brain, where they trigger the body's natural pain relief response releasing endogenous opioids. Finally, these opioids send pain signals toward the delta opioid receptor, which is what triggers those tedious feelings, and reduces the amount of pain you're experiencing. On a single charge, Quell is able to provide up to 40 hours of relief, while Bluetooth connectivity allows it to pair with an iOS device and to track your therapy as well as sleep quality.

It'll be available later this spring for $250 -- and it's already FDA approved, something that's always a good sign for any medical gizmo.