A recent family holiday to a wonderful land of amusement parks and rollercoasters and popcorn (and too many tourists whose BMI was competing with their ambulation) prompted some much needed advice for friends struggling with motion sickness. Some people suffer from it, some don’t. It’s all about synchronicity of signals to your brain.

For starters, any motion can prompt motion sickness – the variable syndrome of nausea, cold flush, dizziness, pallor, dizziness and even vomiting. You can be on the land, in a vehicle, in the air, on the water, wherever. It helps to understand how one registers the sensation of movement. Inside your head, in the inner ear, there is a complex called the vestibular apparatus which is composed of various structures able to send signals to the brain via the same nerve that transmits sound. Part of the apparatus detects linear movement (essentially relative to gravity) which allows your body to detect up and down for example, while a different structure called the semi-circular canals is able to detect rotational (or turning) movements. Other parts of your body though are also sending your brain messages relative to movement – you can see and therefore anticipate bumps or changes in direction and you can feel (through your skin such as by pressure on your feet or even via your bottom when sitting). Now if any of these signals sends a different message to your brain, the result can be motion sickness. An example would be sitting in a car or on a boat and reading – you would “see” a static or stable view of your book, yet your vestibular apparatus would tell you that you were going up or down or rocking about. Result = confused signals = sick.

Can you mitigate this rather unpleasant phenomenon ? Sure, without medication, see if you can normalise the mixed messaging. Stop reading, sit up front, look at what the pilot or driver is looking at, anticipate the movement of the craft, get some fresh air, avoid alcohol or nicotine. Some natural herbal remedies may assist with nausea such as ginger or even peppermint. If the symptoms recur or are particularly bothersome, the antihistamine family of medicines will help and there are a few others your pharmacist or healthcare practitioner can recommend.

Alternatively just stay off the rollercoaster …..

BTW – there is a neurological condition called mal de debarquement (or disembarkment syndrome) which relates to motion sickness. It is described in a few people, usually following a prolonged journey, where the symptoms of rocking or swaying or bobbing (or occasionally the more unpleasant motion sickness features) persist in spite of the movement having ceased. Tricky to treat and can even be persistent – needs a neurologist to tackle the problem.