When Geraldine DeRuiter was about 10 years old, she strapped into the Gravitron ride at an annual church fair in Indialantic, Florida, and convinced herself she’d be just fine. “I knew I sometimes got dizzy,” remembers DeRuiter, now a 34-year-old who lives in Seattle, “but I reasoned that this was an amusement park ride at a church fair — how bad could it possibly be?”
Bad.
As the Gravitron — a spaceship-esque contraption in which riders lean against padded panels on the walls and slide up as the ride spins — accelerated, DeRuiter felt increasingly nauseous. “I closed my eyes and counted the seconds until it was over,” she remembers. When it was, she could barely walk. She curled up with her head on her knees until her friend’s parents took her home, where the room still spun until she fell asleep. “I vowed never to ride another Gravitron again,” DeRuiter says.
DeRuiter is among the one-third of people who research suggests are “highly susceptible” to motion sickness, which can present itself in the form of nausea, vomiting, sweating, sleepiness, dizziness or anxiety, to name a few symptoms. It can strike during travel, on roller coasters or even while playing certain video games.
“As we evolved, we weren’t exposed to the extreme motions that we’re exposed to today,” says Eric Muth, a psychology professor at Clemson University who studies motion sickness. “Our brain is constantly trying to adapt to our situation and, in fact, we’re very good at it. Most people will adapt and stop getting sick.”
But even for people who have more trouble adapting, the condition doesn’t have to dictate their lives. DeRuiter is a case in point: She’s now a travel blogger who’s on the road about one-third of the year. “I don’t think there’s anything I’m more ill-suited to do than this,” says DeRuiter, who launched her blog, The Everywhereist, in 2009 to chronicle her and her husband’s journeys around the world. “But if I can do it, then anyone can.”
The Science of Motion Sickness
No one’s immune from motion sickness. “All you need is a functioning vestibular system,” or the body system responsible for coordinating movement with balance, Muth says. “It’s really a question of degree of susceptibility,” he says. Some people might be more prone due to their genes, research has found.
The condition is generally believed to be caused by a conflict between what your body feels and what your eyes see. “Sensory input starts to disagree and your brain can’t compute why they disagree,” Muth says. If the conflict isn’t resolved, you may feel sick or throw up.
Why? According to one theory, some people’s brains compute that discordance like a toxin , Muth says. “The brain is saying, ‘Hey! It’s poison, get it out!” he says, comparing it to the way some people’s bodies are less tolerant of alcohol.
But not everyone agrees on the exact cause of motion sickness. Thomas Stoffregen, a kinesiology professor at the University of Minnesota, for one, believes the feeling has more to do with the process of adapting to unpredictable movements. “When you get on a ship … you have to change the way you hold your body and move and walk — what’s known as getting your sea legs,” he says. “It takes time to do that, and there are going to be individual differences in how fast people do that.”
Kids and young adults, for instance, seem to be more likely to get sick while traveling than older adults, perhaps because their brains are still developing and their neural connections aren’t solidified, Muth says. People who have migraines, too, are about five times more likely to feel queasy while traveling since any changes in their environments tend to bother them, says Dr. Timothy Hain, an otoneurologist at Chicago Dizziness and Hearing, a private medical practice affiliated with Northwestern University.
There’s also a significant gender difference in motion sickness. Women are more likely to get seasick than men, particularly when they’re pregnant, on their period or taking hormones, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That effect is magnified in virtual environments, according to Stoffregen’s research finding that 38 percent of women got sick in a visual lab device meant to illicit motion sickness while only 9 percent of men did.
Smooth Sailing
As DeRuiter’s found, sometimes travel really is about the destination — not the journey. “There’s so much to see, and you definitely shouldn’t let getting sick stop you [from traveling],” she says. “Even if you are going to face some discomfort, know that it’s going to be temporary and short, and know that you can have a whole week on the ground to enjoy it,” DeRuiter says.
Here are some ways to minimize the discomfort of the journey so you can maximize your enjoyment on steady ground:
1. Face your fears.
If you take a monkey and spin him around for an hour a day for five days, his vestibular system weakens and responds less to motion, says Hain, referencing research that has done just that.
The same idea can be applied to humans. “Prolonged exposure to motion … will make some permanent changes in the nervous system and make you less sensitive to motion,” Hain says. He suggests motion sickness sufferers play sports that involve coordination between the eyes and inner ear (the site of your vestibular system) such as Ping-Pong, volleyball and basketball.
“[Motion sickness] is something where if you push yourself … you can eventually make yourself better through habituation,” Hain says.
2. Keep a happy stomach.
To increase your chances that what goes down doesn’t come up, “stay well-hydrated and well-fed,” Muth says. For example, avoid alcohol and caffeine, which can dehydrate you, and eat familiar foods. “There’s evidence that protein may have a longer-lasting effect in terms of keeping your stomach happy,” he adds.
Stoffregen says products with ginger — think ginger snaps or ginger ale — also seem to have a calming effect on the stomach.
For DeRuiter, however, keeping her belly relatively empty helps most. “My stomach doesn’t want more in it when I’m feeling like that,” she says.
3. Speak up.
As soon as DeRuiter starts to feel a little uneasy, she alerts her travel companions, asking to pull over or step out for a breath of fresh air. If she can’t drive, she asks to sit near the front of the car or bus before the journey begins. “People are pretty understanding,” she says.
But too many motion sickness sufferers keep mum, DeRuiter says. “So many people do the ‘I’m going to suffer in silence’ until it’s way too late,” DeRuiter says. Remember: “People would rather accommodate you beforehand than let you get sick,” she says.
4. Take control.
DeRuiter almost always drives because she’s far less likely to feel queasy behind the wheel than in the passenger’s seat, or worse, in the back. That’s because when you’re in control, you know what’s coming and can adjust your body accordingly, Stoffregen says. “You’re more likely to become unstable as a passenger,” he says.
If you can’t take over, say, the captain’s ship or the driver’s bus, move as close to the front as possible and look at the horizon. “Orient yourself to the movement of the vehicle,” Muth says. Stepping out on a ship’s deck, too, is a better idea than lying down inside the cabin, since the wind on your face will help orient (and cool) you.
One caveat? In planes, looking out the window can have the reverse effect since the scene outside doesn’t always match the way you’re feeling inside. “Take the center seat, put a mask on and take a nap,” Muth advises.
5. Consider medicating.
Nina Kogej’s early travel memories involve the same dialogue: “Mum, I am sick. Stop the car. I will throw up!” says the now-32-year-old from Slovenia. But ever since her doctor prescribed medications in primary school, she hasn’t had a problem.
“My motion sickness symptoms have never appeared again,” says Kogej, who writes about traveling on her blog Nina Travels. “Because of these good results with taking the pills, I have never even tried any other way to cure my motion sickness.”
Though over-the-counter medications such as Bonine and Dramamine suppress the vestibular system and can help a lot of people, they’re not often the first line of defense because behavioral techniques are more sustainable, Hains says. Wrist bands that stimulate a pressure point aren’t scientifically proven to work, while prescription patches worn behind the ear can be effective, but come with side effects such as dry mouth and dehydration, Muth says.
You may also be able to mimic the effects of medication without the side effects — namely, drowsiness. Stoffregen’s advice? “Sit down and use a headrest and close your eyes,” he says. “A sedative … is going to put you in the mood to [do the same thing]: sit down, use a head rest and close your eyes.”
6. Relax.
Muth and his colleagues have a saying: “Relax, no one’s ever died from motion sickness.” Plus, getting anxious about it can spur a dangerous cycle, conditioning you to feel sick on your next trip. “Take deep breaths, relax and try to remain calm,” Muth advises. “The worst thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to vomit — and then you’ll feel better.”
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Help! I Have Motion Sickness originally appeared on usnews.com
