Coping with travel sickness

Coping with travel sickness

Motion sickness can cast a cloud over a family holiday, but there are ways to cope.  

Most of us have occasionally suffered – or had to watch our children suffer – the dreaded curse that is travel sickness. And with the summer touring season now upon us, those three little words all parents dread – “I feel sick” – will rasp out in cars, planes and ferries the world over.

It’s not just children who suffer, although the prime years for travel sickness are from two to 12, with many later outgrowing the problem. But it’s an unpredictable phenomenon and – without warning – those switchback bends that looked so enticing to the driver can suddenly exert their toll, triggering overwhelming waves in the pit of the stomach. You’d rather be anywhere else but here, holiday or no holiday.

Motion sickness is believed to affect 20 million Britons, with symptoms including dizziness, nausea and vomiting. For some, the very thought of it can cast a cloud – as potent as that produced by any Icelandic volcano – over an entire holiday. But, says Dr Jane Wilson-Howarth, a GP from Cambridge and medical director of a travel clinic, it needn’t be this way.

She says that motion sickness begins when conflicting signals are sent to the brain from the eyes and from the inner ear. “If the driver throws the car around, tiny particles of chalk suspended in liquid in your inner ear push against microscopic hairs,” says Dr Wilson-Howarth. “This tells your brain that you are on your side. Meanwhile, your eyes are sending different information and it’s this that makes you sick.”

Dr Wilson-Howarth – who travelled extensively with her two young children when she lived in Nepal – says that where children are concerned, “distractability” is key.