While a popping a couple of aspirin or ibuprofen is a suitable solution for a sore muscle or a headache, anyone who has suffered from chronic pain can tell you that medicine eventually just doesn’t cut it anymore. In fact, regular use of pain medication can actually pose serious risks to your health, as it may lead to heart attacks, strokes, or even kidney failure. The common alternative, surgery, is often costly, invasive, and can involve a painful recovery period itself. Soon though, sufferers of chronic pain may have a couple of innovative new methods for pain relief, courtesy of technology giant Philips. PulseRelief and BlueTouch, set to be released this fall, are the newest iPhone and iPad controlled gadgets that promise to help suppress and, over time, possibly begin to lessen persistent pain.

The first device, PulseRelief, uses Transcutaneous Electronic Nerve Stimulation (TENS) technology, which delivers electric pulses straight to your nerves. The gadget looks a little like a pair of headphones and provides TENS therapy to the wearer by delivering electrical pulses of varying intensity and frequency, which are controlled from an accompanying iOS app on your smartphone. This process activates the nerves underneath the skin which stimulate the body’s natural pain-suppressing capabilities, providing temporary relief to the user. The app lets you choose from various TENS options and even keeps a record of your treatments. An added bonus? The same electrotherapy that helps to amplify natural pain suppression also encourages the production of endorphins, which helps chronic pain sufferers stay active and happier in general.

Philips’ Blue Touch, a gadget specifically designed to help relieve muscular back pain, uses blue LED light to help alleviate pain. Blue LED light stimulates the production of Nitric Oxide in the target area, which in turn helps stimulate blood circulation to the affected area and encourages the body’s natural healing process. This could make for a much more reliable and long-term pain relief solution than, at the least, traditional medicinal painkillers. Much like its PulseRelief cousin, the accompanying iOS app offers various treatment levels and options based on the level of pain. Philips did a test run of BlueTouch and found that 76.8% of users reported experiencing mild pain (as opposed to moderate or severe pain), versus 26% before use.

Both devices were obviously designed to provide non-medical pain relief, but that isn’t the only thing Philips was going for when they created these nifty gadgets. Chronic pain makes it difficult to get around, leading to long periods of inactivity. This serves to make chronic pain worse, which in turn can often leads to depression. For long-term sufferers, the BlueTouch and PulsRelief could offer more than just a little pain relief – it could very well improve their very quality of life.