A Natural Approach To Health

Living With Motion Sickness

For Tony!

I had a question the other day about motion sickness.

If you’ve ever been sick to your stomach on a rocking boat or a bumpy airplane ride, you know the yuck of motion sickness.

Although it doesn’t cause long-term problems, motion sickness can make life miserable, especially if you travel a lot.

People can feel sick from the motion in cars, airplanes, trains, amusement park rides, or on boats or ships.

Video games, flight simulators, and looking through a microscope also can cause motion sickness.

In these cases, the eyes see motion, but the body doesn’t sense it.

Common symptoms of motion sickness are a general sense of not feeling well, nausea, vomiting, headache, and sweating.

Motion sickness occurs when your inner ear, eyes, and other areas of your body that detect motion send conflicting messages to your brain.

One part of your balance-sensing system (your inner ear, vision, and sensory nerves) may sense your body’s moving, while the other parts don’t sense motion.

This leads to a conflict between the senses and results in motion sickness.

To deal with motion sickness it’s beneficial to:

*Drink 6-8 cups of purified water daily to hydrate and flush toxins (whether thirsty or not).

*Black horehound can reduce nausea.

*Butcher’s broom, kudzu, and motherwort help to relieve vertigo.

*Ginger suppresses nausea and therefore is an excellent treatment and preventive for nausea and upset stomach.  Take 2 ginger capsule (approximately 1,000 mg) every 3 hours, starting 1 hour before the beginning of the trip.

*Peppermint tea soothes and calms the stomach.  A drop of peppermint oil on your tongue provides excellent relief from nausea and motion sickness.  Peppermint can also be taken in lozenge form.

*When traveling, take whole-grain crackers with you on trips.  Olives can help ward off nausea because they have the effect of decreasing salivation.

*Try sipping green or ginger tea during long trips.  Sucking on a fresh lemon may also calm your stomach.

*Pay special attention to your diet.  If a certain dish disagrees with you at home, it’ll most certainly disagree with you on the road.

*Don’t eat spicy, salty, sugary, heavy, or fatty foods, especially fried foods, before or during travel.  Avoid dairy products, processed, and junk foods.  These can contribute to nausea or cause digestive imbalances.

*Avoid large meals when traveling.  Eat smaller, more frequent meals so your stomach is never empty.

*Avoid alcohol.  Alcohol disrupts the delicate operations in your inner ear.  If you’re prone to motion sickness, alcohol consumption only aggravates the problem by further disrupting communication between your eyes, your inner ears, and your brain.

*Avoid odors and aromas that can bring about nausea.  Aside from obvious things like smoke and engine exhaust, certain food odors can make you ill, as can paint fumes, nail polish, or animal waste.  Even otherwise pleasant smells, like those from perfume or aftershave, can cause a problem if you’re prone to motion sickness.

*Sit still and breathe deeply.  Your brain is already thoroughly confused without extra motion on your part.  Especially try to keep your head still.  Rest in a reclined position in an area where there’s the least amount of motion (in the center of a ship or in the wing area of an airplane).  Focus your eyes on a distant object and try not to allow your eyes to drift to either side.  Or close your eyes and take deep breaths.  If possible, lie down in a dark place with a cool, damp cloth over your eyes.

*Stay cool, if possible.  Fresh air can help battle motion sickness.  If in a car, roll down a window.  If on a ship, standing on deck and taking in the sea breezes may help.  In an airplane, open the overhead vent.

*When you begin to feel sick, rub or press on your wrist, about 3 fingers’ width down from the line that separates your hand from your arm.  Massaging this acupressure point often stops motion sickness.

*Don’t read while traveling in a car.

*Limit or eliminate visual input.  This will cut down on the conflicting information assaulting your brain.  Traveling at night helps many people, simply because visual acuity is diminished, so they don’t perceive motion to the same degree as during the day.

*Chewable papaya tablets may be helpful.

If you’re dealing with motion sickness, try these (100% money-back guarantee):

It’s essential to use:  VitaLea, Protein, Stomach Soothing Complex, Optiflora, Performance, Calcium, Magnesium, VitalMag, B-Complex.

It’s important to use:  Alfalfa, DTX, Vitamin C, OmegaGuard, GLA, Lecithin.

It’s beneficial to use:  Stress Relief Complex.

email:  lenay@dickandlenay.com

PS:  If you have any questions about motion sickness, and would like to know how supplements can help, give us a call at 715-431-0657.  We’re here to help.