How to Avoid Motion Sickness

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Motion sickness is a term used to refer to the dizziness, nausea and general discomfort experienced during traveling by a car, train or flight. In general, one can experience motion sickness while traveling or while on rides in amusement parks. The cause behind motion sickness is the confusion of the brain when it receives different signals from the eyes and the vestibular system. To make it more clear, consider an example. Say, you're reading a book while traveling by car. Or sitting inside the closed cabin of an airplane. In the first case, your eyes are on the book that you are holding, which is stationary. So, the visual receptors in your eyes tell your brain that you are at rest (as the eyes do not detect any motion). On the other hand, your vestibular system that consists of fluid filled canals in the inner ear, sense movement and tell your brain that you are in motion. Similarly, sitting inside an enclosed cabin, you're unable to see yourself in motion but the vestibular system senses it and sends signals to your brain accordingly.

This disagreement between the two signals "confuses" your brain and as a result of this, you experience nausea and uneasiness. Situations in which the eyes detect movement but the ear canals do not, also cause motion sickness and a good example of such a situation is when you play video games. It is aggravated when the body experiences complex movements such as when an airplane twists and turns in the face of bad weather.