Confucius

Travel Tips and Tricks

Motion Sickness Prevention and Treatment

  Motion sickness, also known as seasickness, occurs due to a disturbance in your inner ear. The inner ear is the area of the body responsible for balance and equilibrium. Typically, when we are on the move, all our senses – ears, eyes, skin, muscle, and joint – tell the brain that we are in motion either through what we hear, what we see, or what we feel. But if you are moving yet still, like when you travel on a ship, plane, car, train, or bus, the senses get conflicting information, and motion sickness tends to occur. According to the CDC, when the movement you see is different from what your inner ear senses, motion sickness occurs. Even though anyone can suffer from motion sickness, it is more common in pregnant women, children, and people on certain medications. Motion sickness typically starts as a queasy feeling but can quickly progress to cold sweats, dizziness, nausea, and even vomiting.  How Do You Prevent Motion Sickness 1. Know Where to Sit While Traveling Where you sit makes a difference to the extent of motion sickness you’d experience. Typically, sitting in front of the car and enjoying the outside scenery helps reduce car sickness. If flying, try to get a wing seat on a plane and look out the window if possible. When on a cruise, staying midship or on the upper deck can help keep things balanced in your brain. And if you’re on a train, seating on the forward-moving cars and near a window helps your brain match up what it sees and what the inner ear senses.  2. Know What Not to Do When you experience motion sickness, especially in a car or a bus, try looking out of the car and focus on things in the distance rather than looking inside the car or reading a book. Your brain typically senses movement by the signals it gets from other parts of the body, like the eyes and inner ear. If you are reading instead of looking out, your ear senses motion but your eyes are focused on a book, which is static. This will make things worse. Read More