Making A Motion for Sickness
Sometimes your body can be a little bitch. Nothing reminds me of this more than when I’m in a car, telling myself to GET MY SHIT TOGETHER as I experience extreme carsickness, reducing me to a blubbering wimp that moans at every bump and
sharp turn.
Carsickness — any kind of motion sickness, really — comes from a mismatch between senses. When you’re in the backseat of a car or on the deck of a ship, your eyes might be focused on something fixed, say a map or a cute guy sunbathing, while your inner ear is telling your brain that you’re moving. When these two things don’t match up (your inner ear detecting movement and what you’re seeing IRL), your body goes into total freak out mode, its natural way of telling you something isn’t right.
This warning system comes in a wave of annoying and sometime debilitating symptoms, including cold sweats, difficulty breathing, a racing heart, and (everyone’s favorite) nausea. Some people have been found to be more prone to motion sickness, including people with an inner ear problem, poor vision, and even diabetes due to numbness in the feet that makes it difficult to feel when they’re moving.
While there’s no therapy to completely rid yourself of motion sickness altogether, there are some ways to treat the symptoms and help you feel better faster.
First, if you’re in a car, try to look out at the horizon or a fixed object in the distance. Having a sense of the vehicle you’re in and when it’s stopping and accelerating will help you align what you’re seeing with what your inner ear is feeling. Sitting in the front seat and watching the driver brake — or even better, driving the car yourself — can help. Avoid reading or watching videos at all costs, as this will further confuse the senses, and roll the window down or crank the air conditioning if you are getting the sweats.
Like positioning yourself in the front seat of a car, requesting a cabin in a ship near the middle or front near the water level can help reduce the amount of movement you experience, quieting symptoms. A seat over the front edge of the wing of a plane and near the front of a train can also help you avoid motion sickness.
If all else fails, there’s always drugs. A Dramamine patch, antihistamine, and antimuscarinic drugs can help you deal with the nausea as well, although these are only treating the symptoms, not the motion sickness itself.
