February 27, 2008

Over the years of our youth almost everybody is touched by car sickness. Maybe you got it one family outing reading the beano in the car and suffered the next few times you went out. Perhaps a sibling or cousin did, or maybe even the horror of being labelled the 'sick kid' at school following a bout on the coach for a school trip. Either way this form of motion sickness is a nightmare whenever it strikes.

Understanding the cause of this malaise helps us prevent the onset of car sickness and deal with it when we feel it’s unwelcome entry to the pit of our stomach. Motion sickness is caused by conflicting information entering our brain. Our eyes may view the scenery rushing past as we drive down the road but our inner ear and other sensory areas of our body don’t get the corresponding sense data as we’re sat still with little or no engine noise generated.

The body’s Vestibular system or balance system takes its information from the inner ear. It matches his information with data coming from the eyes. As the two don’t match the brain is programmed to assume that the disparity is due to hallucinations which must have been due to poison ingestion – thus the need to empty the stomach.

It is well known that the driver doesn’t get sea sick and the reason for this is that their view is always on the horizon. With this the sensation of motion is changed, as the horizon doesn’t tend to change very quickly, and as such the eye stimulus and the inner ears sensation is aligned so there in no conflict, hence no sickness.

The best way to avoid car sickness is to make sure that from your seat in the car that you can look at a fixed point rather than see lots of changes in the scenery. Opening the window should also help with this as your inner ear will gain extra sensation, this will help it’s alignment with the visual stimulus.

There are plenty of patches and potions on the market. Some people have reported scopolamine patches, worn behind the ear offers a good preventative remedy. However as car sickness is often the blight of children you may not want to use narcotics to cure their ill and would be better off thinking of a strategy to occupy their line of vision. This should prevent their brain thinking they’ve been drugged and emptying their stomach all over the back of your chair.

Ginger and peppermint are both thought to help prevent the onset of car sickness so it may be worth keeping a supply of mints or Ginger snaps in the car for long journeys.

Many family vehicles are now fitted with DVD players in the back to keep the kids entertained so this should prove an effective solution and added bonus. Not only will the kids be quiet but they no longer turn green and demand that you pull over after twenty minutes on the road.

As far as I'm aware there is no research to validate the claimed benefits of in car DVD players in terms of reducing car sickness, but as they become more common this will become available. As they concentrate the eye on something other than the scenery rushing past, they should align the inner ear and the eye. This will leave the passengers feel no different to is they were sitting in their front room, hopefully removing car sickness from your travel experience.

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