Almost everyone, at some time and probably more than one time, will experience the disquieting effects of motion sickness. No one will enjoy it. And chances are that very few of us will understand just what it is and how it works. Gratefully, there are methods such as motion sickness bands, pills, natural foods, and other options to naturally help with motion sickness. It also helps if you understand why you get motion sick and what is happening to your body, which can help us understand how to overcome the discomforts and problems when we get motion sick.
We can probably all describe the symptoms of motion sickness from our own experience: pale, sweaty skin, weakness, probably headache and/or dizziness, an increasingly uncomfortable stomach and, inevitably, nausea and vomiting. Sadly, unlike most sicknesses, vomiting does little to remove the misery: relief only comes with a change in one’s physical circumstances. The problem is not due to a weak stomach, or a delicate constitution, as many have supposed; the real culprit is our brain. Lucky us.
This is the way it works: Our brain receives information about our body’s movement, balance, and relative position from three main sources – our eyes, inner ear, and nervous system. Our eyes tell us where we are and if things are moving. Our inner ear tells us if we are balanced and if we are moving. Our nervous system tells us if we are standing, leaning, sitting, etc. If the inputs from all three systems agree, we’re fine. When there is a disconnect, we’re going to suffer.
One sort of disconnect occurs when motion is felt but not seen. We can become carsick when our eyes see the motionless interior of the
vehicle while our inner ear tells us that we are moving – making bumps, curves, and corners our own private source of misery . We can suffer that same motion sickness in the comfortable interior of a jet plane, or on board the grandest of cruise ships, and for the same reason: we see no motion, but we can surely feel it.
But the reverse is also true: we can suffer motion sickness when motion is seen but not felt. Consider the impact of an IMAX film on your stomach as you watch airplane dogfights or sudden violent downdrafts. Simulators such as those used to train pilots or student drivers can have the same effect, as can virtual reality games. Astronauts very often suffer motion sickness in flight.
Another cause of motion sickness comes when the body both sees and feels motion but the two inputs do not correspond. This ‘out-of-synch’ feeling can quickly translate to total woe. For example, there are amusement park rides that simulate gravity through the use of centrifugal force, leaving the susceptible rider greatly distressed, if not ill.
Some of the ills and miseries we have to contend with are products of our modern-day lifestyles; and, to an extent, this is also true of motion sickness – no one ever suffered motion sickness riding in a horse-drawn buggy, where one both saw the buggy’s movement and felt every bumpy inch of it. But the ancient Greeks knew all about motion sickness themselves; indeed, our word ‘nausea’ comes directly from the Greek word ‘naus’, their word for ‘ship’. One can only hope they had a cure, since they clearly suffered the disease.