Facts You Should Know About Motion Sickness Before Travelling
Car, air or seasickness is actually motion sickness. Nauseousness, sweating, vomiting, gut-wrenching feeling and dizziness are all symptoms of motion sickness. It occurs when your brain can not process what you feel, listen to, or see. Fast rides in amusement parks, car rides, travelling in an aeroplane or a boat all can create motion sickness.
In this article, health experts at emeds give insight related to motion sickness and its facts.
Who Can Get Motion Sick?
On average, two in six people are reported to get affected by motion sickness. However, children under the age of twelve and women are more prone to this than anyone else. Nevertheless, anybody can experience this. Human beings are more likely to encounter these situations if they are known to have a family history of motion sickness, frequent migraines, suffering from eating disorders, pregnancy, Parkinson’s disease, on their menstrual periods or are on birth control.
What Actually Causes Motion Sickness?
When different parts of your body (ears, joints, eyes, muscles etc.) feel various sensations, your brain receives more than one signal and gets confused. Your thoughts also confuse your brain when they overlap with each other. It is proven that you are most likely to get motion sickness if you think about it. The sickness is your brain’s response when it does not know if it is still or moving.
Let’s see some examples:
Your eyes are on your phone or your book, and you see things outside your car in your periphery vision, your ears feel that you are moving while your legs and joints think that you are sitting still.
The same thing happens when you are on a bus, boat, plane or train. It can even be triggered when you are playing video games, and everything else in your periphery is still while your game is moving.
What Are The Symptoms Of Motion Sickness?
You will always feel like throwing up and nauseous at first, followed by cold sweats and being unable to comprehend anything else. Next, your head will start to spin, making you feel dizzy, irritated, and agitated, and then you will feel a headache, possibly a migraine. It is reported that people also feel shortness of breath, fatigue and an increase in saliva and heartbeat.
How To Prevent Motion Sickness?
Keep a soothing scent with you wherever you go, herbs, lavender, mint etc.
Drivers rarely experience motion sickness. Change places with the driver if you can or chew on hard candies if you can not.
Fresh air always helps you with everything. Get the driver to stop a car on the roadside if possible. Get out and breathe. Let the fresh feeling sink in and make you feel better.
Your diet also has a contribution to this. Eat healthily and drink plenty of water and other fluids to stay hydrated. Water can solve more than half of your body’s problems Water is the key to making anything better.
Put down your phone, book, tablet, laptop or whatever you are using and focus on the road. Don’t look sideways or turn to talk to anyone. Instead, look forward towards the road. Or lay back down and close your eyes. Zone everything out and focus on your breathing. Inhale. Exhale.
Do not drink alcohol or smoke before travelling. The caffeine can make you agitated and stressed, which adds to the mixed sensations your brain is feeling.
Get yourself acupressure wristbands. They target your pressure points which results in you soothing down. If you do not have those wristbands, search the web for the pressure points and massage them yourself.
Sit in the middle of the boat, sit in a window seat on a train and bus and the wing section on a plane, get yourself a lower level room on a cruise ship which is closer to the water, and always sit in the front passenger seat if you are not driving.
How To Manage Motion Sickness?
It does not cause serious problems ver commonly, but you can still easily manage it with over-the-counter medicines and treatments like:
- Antihistamines: Antihistamines are commonly used to treat allergies, but they can also prevent motion sickness and alleviate symptoms. Antihistamines that produce drowsiness are the only ones that work. Non-drowsy formulations are ineffective.
- Scopolamine patches and oral tablets treat nausea and vomiting. At least four hours before travelling, place the patch behind your ear. You remove the patch after three days and apply a new one. This drug is only for adults and can induce dry mouth.
Visit A Doctor
If you ever experience this feeling more frequently, you should not delay it anymore. Visit a doctor as soon as you can and explain your condition to them. You can make it a bigger problem if you continue to ignore it. The doctor may prescribe you the same over the counter medicines mentioned above, but it is still a better option to be on the safe side and visit them.
