Synonym: Sea Sickness
Table of Contents
Motion sickness is found in a few people who get sick while traveling in a car, bus, ship, or plane. It’s a common phenomenon found in many people especially females and children.
What is motion sickness?
Motion sickness is a feeling of nausea, vomiting, or dizziness during travel in a car, ship, or airplane.
What causes motion sickness?
It’s caused by repeated motion by vehicle or other movements that stimulates inner ear.
It comprises of conflicting signals received by the brain through various receptors like eyes, inner ear, or joints.
The conflict is the perception of motion leaves the brain dizzy. Like your eyes are looking at movement, the inner ear is perceiving motion by the movement of the car but your legs are resting so joints are telling otherwise so the difference in reception of signals leaves the brain confused. In turn, a confused brain causes nausea, vomiting, headache, and dizziness in people.
What are the symptoms of motion sickness?
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Dizziness
- Tinnitus
- Pallor
- Sweating
- Drooling
- Headache
- Yawning
- Heaviness of head
- Feeling of unease or unwell
How can we control motion sickness?
There are few things that helps:
- Close your eyes or sleep (reduce the visual input to the brain)
- Try and fix your gaze on the horizon on the ship, take a seat over the wing in plane and see through windshield of car in the front seat: Aim is to look at a stable object.
- Avoid oily or heavy meal
- Do not consume alcohol or smoke
- Do not read a book or watch a movie during travel
- Ginger & peppermint helps
Moreover you could take medication to reduce the stimulation of inner ear like:
- Antihistamines are the mainstay of treatment like cinnarizine, dimenhydrinate, cyclizing, promethazine, hyoscine, etc. these all drugs cause sedation and dry mouth too.
- Antiemetics to reduce nausea vomiting like domperidone, ondansetron, etc
- Dermal patches are available too (hyoscine & scopolamine). Apply 3-4 hours prior to travel and they last for 2-3 days.
- Acupressure also offers pressure points (inner side of the wrist) to reduce nausea & vomiting.
Whenever I feel motion sickness I prefer to sleep through it.
I hope the post was useful to all.
Happy Traveling
Be well & Travel safe.
References:
- Scott Brown 7th Ed.
- https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/12782-motion-sickness
- https://patient.info/travel-and-vaccinations/health-advice-for-travel-abroad/motion-travel-sickness
- https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/176198
- https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/ear-infection/motion-sickness#1
I didn’t know ginger and peppermint could help with motion sickness. Will try them next time!
Great tips to get one to feel better during motion sickness. I recommend lemon juice too. It relieves dizziness and the sick feeling.
Great tips, I do follow light diet, not continuously looking at moving objects and I take hajmola, avomine is last option always. But I never knew of ginger & peppermint. Thanks for the share.
these tips helped me too.
Amazing tips. I always keep a lemon with me. The smell of the lemon peel helps my motion sickness.
I suffer from motion sickness and swear by peppermint. You have listed some excellent tips that I surely going to try out. Thanks for sharing them.
I had motion sickness as a child and have disrupted quite a few trips with nausea/vomiting. Thankfully my parents understood. It was triggered more in buses and taxis by the odour of diesel. Closing the eyes and taking a little nap helped mostly. Thanks for writing!
#ReadByPRB
I have motion sickness and I surely take measures to avoid it as much as I can. Your post is helpful to understand more about it.
i hope my post would help you get through in your next trip
After my pregnancies, I started feeling motion sickness especially climbing upwards. I try to sleep but in vain. Well, peppermint sounds helpful.
pregnancy aggravated motion sickness and the worst thing is that you can’t even take medicine
As a kid I used to have motion sickness while travelling in bus, but luckily it somehow disappeared as I grew up. But I still get seasickness. I have found a few very experienced mariners still getting sea sickness. Ship rolling is the worst part of being in a ship if you are prone to sea sickness!
I have motion sickness and I try to do some of the things you mentioned. I will try the others. “Stematil” is a medication one can try. It helps me in higher elevation places.
yes stemetil, avomine they all help they’re labrynthine sedatives.
Thank you for the post. My husband has recently developed motion sickness and we were looking for remedies. I will send lots of ginger for his next trip
Good tips, one can try homeopathic remedies too. These are helpful
good tips, one can add tamarind too
oooh yes i remember eating the sugared tamarind candies
My brother used to suffer from motion sickness and had to take antiemetics before traveling. Recently, I have also started getting sick while traveling on road in Ac vehicles,maybe because everything remains closed. I prefer munching on snacks 😁 A very informative post.
the main aim to resolve the motion sickness is fooling the mind by letting it think that we’re not moving.
I just love this post, Richa.
I did overcome my motion sickness to an extent.
While earlier I used to feel dizzy & nauseated throughout a road journey, flight & even on roller coasters & giant wheels, I have been able to conquer some of it with making it regular. Probably I trained my mind that way.
I used to have Avomine on road trips, but right now, I just feel dizzy while the vehicle traverses serpentine ways or when I try to type something on my phone. I had never thought why motion sickness happened to people, in the first place.
Glad to have found you through MFA!
I have struggled with motion Sickness for the longest time ever. Cannot step in the vehicle without consuming an antihistaminic. Nice post
Your post is very helpful. Do not have motion sickness, but I could imagine from having these things,each and every one. There is so much sickness going around, some people are confused. Alot of
people find it hard to believe that these things will go away and I have proof of it from God’s word the Bible. Would you like to learn more.
I’m glad you found my post helpful
Can I send you a article, about a new world to come?
Hi Elizabeth, mine is a health, lifestyle and travel blog so kindly select a related topic and message me on livingherself@gmail.com