Motion Sickness

Motion sickness is caused by a mismatch between your senses. Your inner ear detects movement, your eyes report what they can see, and the nerves in your joints and muscles report where your body is. When those three disagree, the brain reads the conflict as a problem and triggers nausea.

Reading in a moving car is the classic example. Your eyes are fixed on a still page while your inner ear feels every bend in the road. Sitting below deck on a boat, or in the back seat with a limited view, does the same thing.

Some things make it more likely: a stuffy or fuel-smelling cabin, a heavy meal or alcohol beforehand, anxiety about travelling, and simply expecting to feel sick. Pregnancy and migraine also make people more susceptible, and it tends to run in families.

It is not food poisoning, it is not contagious, and it is not a sign that anything is wrong with you. Children between about 2 and 12 are affected most often, and many people find it eases as they get older.

• Nausea, and sometimes vomiting
• Cold sweats and a clammy feeling
• Dizziness or light-headedness
• Looking pale
• Headache
• Tiredness, and wanting to close your eyes
• More saliva than usual, or a sudden dislike of food smells
• A general feeling of unease before any of the above

Symptoms usually build over the first half hour of a journey and settle within a few hours of stopping. If sickness or dizziness carries on when you are not travelling, if it comes with hearing loss or ringing in the ears, or if you have a severe headache, weakness or difficulty speaking, see your GP or seek urgent advice rather than treating it as travel sickness.

Motion sickness responds well to treatment, and timing matters more than anything else. Taken one to two hours before you travel, medication works well. Taken once you already feel sick it works far less reliably, because by that point the stomach has largely stopped emptying.

Prescription treatment

Cyclizine is an antihistamine that works on the part of the brain that controls vomiting, and on the balance system of the inner ear.

• Cyclizine 50mg tablets – one tablet up to three times a day, with a maximum of three tablets in 24 hours
• Take the first dose one to two hours before you set off, not once you already feel sick
• Supplied for travel and motion sickness only, to adults aged 18 to 64

What to expect

Cyclizine commonly causes drowsiness. Do not drive, cycle or use tools or machinery after taking it, and do not drink alcohol while you are taking it – alcohol and cyclizine together are a particularly poor combination.

Practical measures

These help alongside medication, and for milder motion sickness they are often enough on their own.

• Sit in the front of a car, over the wing of a plane, or midships on a boat
• Keep your eyes on the horizon
• Get fresh air where you can
• Avoid reading and screens while you are moving
• Eat lightly before you set off, and avoid alcohol

When this is not the answer

If you are being sick for a reason other than travel, or the sickness keeps coming back, that needs looking at properly rather than treating at home.