Motion sickness
If you’ve ever been sick to your stomach while riding in a car, train, airplane or boat, you know exactly what motion sickness feels like. It’s no fun. To understand motion sickness, it helps to understand a few parts of your body and how they affect the way you feel movement.
•Inner ears: Liquid in the semi-circular canals of the inner ear allows you to sense if you’re moving, and, if you are, which way you’re moving – up, down, side to side, round and round, forward or backward.
•Eyes: What you see also lets your body know whether you’re moving and in which direction.
•Skin receptors: These receptors tell your brain which parts of your body are touching the ground.
•Muscles and joint sensory receptors: These sensing receptors tell your brain if you’re moving your muscles and which position your body is in.
The brain gets an instant report from these different parts of your body and tries to put together a total picture about what you are doing just at that moment. But if any of the pieces of this picture don’t match, you can get motion sickness. For example, if you’re riding in a car and reading a book, your inner ears and skin receptors will detect that you are moving forward. However, your eyes are looking at a book that isn’t moving, and your muscle receptors are telling your brain that you’re sitting still. So the brain gets a little confused. Things may begin to feel a little scrambled inside your head at that point. When this happens, you might feel really tired, dizzy or sick to your stomach. Sometimes, you might even throw up. And if you’re feeling scared or anxious, your motion sickness might get even worse.
For typical motion sickness, your parent may be able to give you medicine before you travel. For some kids, it may help to wear pressure bracelets that can be bought at the drugstore.
If you feel yourself getting sick while you’re traveling in a car, it might help if the driver finds a safe spot where you can get out and walk around a little bit.
