A cure for motion sickness

I am quite pleased to report that my motion sickness is cured, and I hope that this cure can be applied to other cases. I'm fairly certain that there are many kinds of motion sickness, so let me describe mine and how I (inadvertently) treated it. If the treatment helps you, please let me know!

My motion sickness, first and foremost, prevented me from reading in a car, or any moving object. This could be a considerable problem, particularly when faced with navigating maps - the effort to concentrate on a map would cause nausea within two minutes or so, and take perhaps five to dissipate. I experienced this profoundly while on recent trip to New Zealand traveling in the back of a camper van.

Occasionally, my motion sickness would attack me while sailing - but usually not within many hours of being on the water. And usually I would vomit once or twice and then be fine. The one exception is one time when I had a touch of flu, and was sick within an hour of being on the water (and violently ill the entire 12 hour journey - which is a story for another time). Reading of any sort, or any concentrated activity, especially below decks, would cause a wave of nausea.

That's the extent of it: I have never been motion sick on a roller coaster, and never on a large plane, or on a large ship. (Well, I did feel a bit sick when the pilot of a small plane showed me some acrobatics, but that hardly counts!)

(Why not Dramamine? I found out early on that I despise Dramamine more than I despise being motion sick - Dramamine makes me feel sleepy without allowing me to go to sleep, keeping me in this incredibly uncomfortable in-between state that feels awful. I would only use it in exceptional circumstances, like that 12-hour torture sail mentioned above.)

Anyway, I've been living on a small sailboat for about 4 months now, and recently discovered that, somehow, my motion sickness has all but gone! I can read in the car! Heck, I could even write stuff in my laptop in the back of a taxi (which would normally be even more nausea inducing than reading)! I'm quite pleased about this and can't wait to test the limits of my newfound tolerance.

So that's it! Live on a boat for a while, and maybe that will help your motion sickness. If it does, I'd love to hear from you.

(My guess is that the constant motion while sleeping on a boat conditions the body to respond in a more normal way to small motions. I say "all but gone" because I can feel the discomfort begin while, for example, reading in the car. but it never gets past discomfort into full-blown nausea. It's like the waves are still breaking on the beach but they just aren't strong enough to get past the boardwalk).

Hope this helps!

3 comments:

Sharon said...

You haven't told about herbal Motion Sickness Medication.
What do you think about this?

josh said...

I haven't tried it. But of course, now I don't have to! :)

ultrasonic liposuction guide said...

Motion sickness is the nausea, disorientation and fatigue that can be induced by head motion. Do not read while traveling if you are subject to motion sickness, and do not sit in a seat facing backward.