Friday, October 10, 2008

Self Care - Tricks to avoid Motion Sickness

I've been suffering from motion sickness for long, and frankly speaking, I haven't found anything that can cure it. However, I've come across various tricks that often help.
What I've read at various places is that motion sickness is caused due to confusion between what we are seeing and what we are feeling. Our eyes tell our brain that we're moving with respect to the whole world, whereas rest of the body feels that we're not moving (with respect to the vehicle). This leads to slight dizziness followed by nausea.
Anyways, enough theory, lets get to the points.

First, some Dos and Donts:

- Don't eat heavy food prior to traveling, but don't even stay hungry.
- Avoid smoking.
- While traveling don't read. Not even sms on your mobile phones.
- If possible, choose a seating location where you can feel some air on your face.
- While sitting, sit in a position such that your body is straight and you're leaning forward; as if you're paying attention in your class.


Now some tricks:

- Wherever possible, go for a nap.
- Eat ginger in any form; could be a toffee, some home cooked light food or even in raw form (if you can stand the taste).
- Mint is also helpful. For some people even chewing gum works.
- This one is slightly weird one: some taxi drivers even advised to sit on a newspaper. I don't know what's the reason behind it, but worth giving a try.
- This one is the most successful one for me: I purchase lots of lemon & orange candies, and keep at least one in my mouth all the time.
- This is another one that I found on internet; it sounds little weird but worth giving a try:
From the second you get onto the vehicle, start to chew gum.(About 3 pieces.) This helps with involving your jaw and ears both accumulate and it really works. Towards the middle of the trip, spit out your gum and snack on some saltines. These put more sodium in your body, which combines with the sugar, but also relaxes your jaws and forehead. Snack for about 10 minutes. When your done with your salty snack, put about 3 pieces of fresh gum back in your mouth and chew away. Once whatever you're in starts to stop, put in another stick of gum and chomp the gum like a cow, opening your mouth as wide as possible, circling and closing. Stick your fingers in your ears.
Once you start to exit the vehicle, keep going on with the cow chomps, but remove your fingers from ears.
About 10 minutes after landing, stomp your feet and your motion sickness should be long gone.

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