Many are born with it, some develop it as they grow up, and a lucky few are just naturally immune to it; however, regardless of the random nature of genetic inheritance, one thing is universally true about motion sickness: nobody wants it.
Motion sickness occurs when your body’s motion-detecting parts, namely your eyes and inner ear, send sensory information to the brain that conflict with information coming from other parts of your body. In other words, your eyes may see one thing while your body is feeling something different entirely, which places considerable strain on your brain due to its inability to process why the two sets of information disagree. When you’re on a swaying ship, for example, your body may feel that it’s moving, but your eyes would see that you haven’t moved a step relative to your position on the ship. The mental strain leads to a number of symptoms which vary according to one’s sensitivity. For some people, reading on a bus may cause little more than a headache and slight nausea; in contrast, for those who are especially sensitive to motion sickness, even the gentlest swaying of a ship can induce vomiting.
Image Source: Jan & Rhys Hanna
Regardless of the severity of your symptoms, you can definitely overcome your motion sickness. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which believes motion sickness is psychological, developed a program to train motion-sensitive astronauts to deal with the disorienting nature of space travel. Their past studies have shown that within six hours of intensive training, 80% of the participants were able to improve their tolerance to motion sickness.
While its true effectiveness is still under study, the program does show that it’s possible to build tolerance to motion through desensitization. The key is to:
- Expose your body to motion sickness, with methods like playing first-person video games such as Call of Duty or reading a book on a bus for a brief amount of time,
- Take the next day off to let your body recover and adapt, and
- Repeat the process all over again.
Just like working out at the gym, you must train your motion sickness on a consistent basis; otherwise, you’ll eventually lose your hard-earned gains if you stop training.
Training is effective in fighting motion sickness but it’s not the only way. Alternatively, you can correct for what caused your motion sickness in the first place. You can’t control what your body feels but you can control what your eyes see. If your body senses motion on a moving object, you can look outside or focus on the horizon to perceive motion and ease the mental stress. Conversely, you can shut off conflicting sensory input by closing one of your eyes. Reading in the car with one eye open, for example, will help ward off headaches.
The science behind motion sickness is still relatively new, so current treatments and medications have room for improvement. These techniques may not work for everyone, but if you’re sick of motion sickness, it’s worth a try.
Feature Image Source: ‘Astronaut’ guide by Paul Hudson
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