Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with motionsickness

Alternatives to boat trips in Cairns, for snorkeling?

choochoo — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:59:17 -0800

Alternatives to boat trips in Cairns? We are going to Australia next week and heading up to Cairns to check out the Great Barrier Reef. Or, at least, for my husband to spend time at the Great Barrier Reef. This is my problem: Although I don't dive, I would love to snorkel...BUT I have a real problem with motion sickness.

Dramamine in the past has helped for maybe ONE hour and then faded away. The boat trips from Cairns out to the GBR usually are all-day trips so if I get sick I'm hosed and am stuck on the boat all day.

Aussies or anyone else who's been to Cairns, is there anywhere I can go where I can get some decent snorkeling in without having to take a boat all the way out to the GBR and risk being stuck all day seasick? Has anyone been to Whitsunday Islands, and if so, can you go snorkeling there without boating all the way out? Are there any similar options closer to Cairns?

Suggestions to help with motion sickness are also welcome (if I do decide to do the boat trip, I'll probably take Dramamine and wear motion sickness wrist bands, which have helped me in the past--please do not tell me they only work via placebo effect, I need all the positive thinking I can get!).

Thanks everyone!

Can I enjoy a vacation in Belize if I have motion sickness?

chowflap — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:08:39 -0800

I am in the middle of planning a trip to Belize for this February. From what I've read, the roads are bumpy, and you have to take little boats to the snorkeling spots. I get motion sick. Am I going to be miserable in Belize? I know a bunch of MeFites have been to Belize, and it sounds wonderful. My plan is to spend half the vacation in the Cayo and half on the beach (maybe a Caye?). I want to travel by bus to Tikal. I want to take a boat to go snorkel in an atoll. Do people prone to motion sickness do these things? I mean, without barfing a lot?

p.s. I am not looking for motion-sickness remedies. Bonine works for me, sometimes, but also makes me pretty sleepy, so I'd rather not be on it a whole week.

why does LETS GO RIDE BIKES

yonation — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:54:15 -0800

why do i get motion sickness only on specific forms of transportation? on a train and an airplane i can read for hours with no problem. in a car or a bus, forget about more than a quick two minute glance. why is this? the train is often more bumpy than the cushioned bus ride, but still causes more reading nausea (i get *no* other motion sickness symptom, even on crazy bus rides, just when reading). this is more of a curiosity than a solve-my-problem question, i don't think its affected my life that much.

We are experiencing unusual turbulence

carbide — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:28:26 -0800

Vertigo and motion sickness - is there any way out of it? I've had vertigo for years, continuous with some days worse than others - no conclusive diagnosis but the neurologist reckoned that it's a migraine aura without the accompanying migraine, and my own doctor suspects it's Meniere's disease. Other, more intrusive health problems took centre stage so, yes I have a doctor, no, you are not my doctor, and yes, I will see them about this, but I can't go in the next few days.

Travelling makes me really queasy, really dizzy and really, really tired. Panicky, too, but that's a bit chicken/egg as I'm a nervous person and, oh yeah, an emetophobe to boot. I never got motion sickness pre-vertigo, spent my whole childhood reading through 20-hour car journeys, etc.

For travel, I've tried antihistamines, those wrist bands, food/drink stuff like lots of water and ginger, and a whole heap of stuff working on the anxiety side. Some things are slightly helpful but nothing's great.

Buses are worst, then cars, trains and planes, although planes and buses tie for first because I know there's no real escape. I sometimes get it from cycling, even. In the next week, I have a 7-hour round trip by train (for a job interview) and two 3.5-hour flights (for a holiday), and it's probably too late to help with either of those, but if the former goes well I'll have to travel a lot more and it would be great to get it in hand at all. I am planning/worrying about all my travel based on feeling awful, and that's a disaster.

Other basics: female, mid-twenties, fitness level of a fast commuter cyclist, other health issues are digestive, don't drink, smoke about 10/day (I know, I know, and that's really 5-20/day), don't drive.

So:
- has anyone with vertigo found help with travel?
- as part b to that, do you experience motion sickness while you're the driver?

Stop the New York World, I want to get off

Countess Elena — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:33:00 -0800

How can I avoid motion sickness while reading microfilm, or, failing that, clear my head quickly? If you've never heard of this, I know it sounds hilariously hypochondriac, but -- yes! Microfilm! In my job, I regularly have to search for small items in old newspapers. It's a lot of fun, but it's usually only an hour into the work when I'm headachy, nauseous, and feeling as if the room is suddenly very small.

I looked up tips for this kind of thing, which, luckily, hasn't only happened to me. I've learned not to watch the reel spin by on the screen when I'm cranking it forward. Sometimes, though, I absolutely have to watch days' worth of newspapers pass slowly by me as I look for the desired item, not knowing precisely where it is or if it was printed at all. This is especially the case with early 20th century newspapers that didn't index their articles by subject every day, but just filled up the columns with news tidbits.

Dramamine causes drowsiness, I understand, and I can't take anything that would interfere with going back to the office and getting on with the day. Due to scheduling, I need to get as much productive good out of each library trip as possible.

If I'm stuck with the symptoms, I'm stuck. Does anybody have tricks for a quick head-clearing? (A walk helps, but the symptoms are immediately just as bad when I start again.)

Swimmingfilter: Lap swimming leaves me motion sick.

sisquoc15 — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:32:19 -0800

Swimmingfilter: Lap swimming leaves me motion sick. Ideas? I swam competitively as a grade schooler and continue to swim for exercise. I’ve been out of the pool for about a year because most sessions would end with some motion sickness, characterized by dizziness, lethargy, mild disorientation and yawning (without stomach upset). This didn’t happen when I was a kid.

When last I was swimming, I was mostly swimming mid-day sessions and the after effects of the motion sickness would last several hours and make work in the afternoon difficult.

I was swimming between 1,000 and 2,000 meters, most free with some breast and fly. I’m pretty sure only the freestyle breathing head rotation is causing the dizziness. In the free, I breathe every right hand stroke. I tried breathing every third stroke to alternate my head rotation. I still ended up dizzy. Emphasizing rolling my body to breathe, rather than head rotation seemed to make the problem worse.

My optometrist did some tests and thinks I likely have some crystals in my ear fluid that magnifies the perceived effects of any motion. This sounds likely, as I get motion sick in other situations (facing backwards in cars, rough air flights, rollercosters) fairly easily.

I miss swimming and would like to start up again. Anyone else dealt with this problem? Any suggestions?

Video games suddenly make me sick?

kbanas — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:09:25 -0800

So, I guess I'm getting motion sick now? I've been playing electronic games - video games, computer games, that sort of thing - for an awful long time now.

Maybe 15, 20 years.

The first FPS I can clearly recall playing is Descent, way back on my 386/SX20.

I've never had any kind of physical reaction to playing a video game, save one - for some inexplicable reason, playing Quake 2 used to cause me some sort of awful motion sickness. I would get a headache, get nauseous, get incredibly hot and tingly. It was not a good scene.

I attributed it, at the time, to just being something particular about Quake 2. The lighting, the color palette.. I don't know, exactly.. but since it had never happened to me before, and hasn't happened since, I just kind of chalked it up to some kind of oddity and moved on.

In the time since, I've played a lot of FPS games - Quake 3, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, No One Lives Forever, Call of Duty, Halo... on a console.. on my PC...I mean, if it's been a popular FPS game, I've probably played it, and aside from a slight case of carpal tunnel, everything has been fine.

Except - about a year ago, I bought an X-Box 360 and a copy of Gears of War. A friend and I hunkered down in front of my 27" TV and started to play through the game on the cooperative setting, and several hours later, I found myself in that strange place again - a headache, nauseous, hot all over - and I thought to myself, "Oh my God! Another game that makes me sick! How crappy!"

I've tried to play Gears of War several other times, and the result has always been the same.

Over the last year, I've continued to play FPS games on my PC - Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2 - and I haven't had any trouble.

Two weeks ago, a bunch of friends and I got together to play some Halo 3 multiplayer... I was on the TV downstairs (a big 42" HD dealie) with a partner, playing with a matching pair of friends upstairs. After about 45 minutes, I felt the getting-more-familiar grip of sickness, so I stopped playing.

Later in the day, I convinced myself that it, perhaps, had something to do with the cooperative mode of these games. With both Gears of War and Halo 3, my experience has been almost exclusively in a split screen environment. I rationalized that perhaps the movement of the 2nd player was somehow getting caught up in my peripheral vision and was causing some sort of schism in my brain, resulting in me getting sick. I based this conclusion in part on the fact that my motion-sickness seemed much less prone to occur when I was playing a multiplayer versus game, as opposed to a cooperative game. The logic being that in a co-op game, I need to be aware of where my partner is, so I look at his screen much more often than during a deathmatch, where I try not to look at my opponent's screen.

So, later in the day, I performed an experiment - I claimed a TV for myself, and forced the rest of my friends to play on another machine. We played for three or four hours straight, and I felt fine.

Well, that's great - except last week I bought Call of Duty 4 for my X-Box. I hunkered down to play it by myself and, wouldn't you know it, after the first mission I felt like I was going to die.

This was, again, on my 42" HD screen. I mention this only because yesterday, being stubborn as I am, I took my X-Box over to my girlfriend's house and played Call of Duty on her 27" TV and played for about two hours without any ill effects.

What the hell!

This is very, very, very irritating. I do not like getting sick, yet I do not want to stop playing games.

So, I've considered the possibility that it has something to do with split-screen gaming, but that doesn't seem all that likely.

I've considered it has something to do with having it be on such a large TV - but when I got sick playing Gears of War the first time, it was on a smaller screen.

Someone also mentioned it might be a side-effect of some medication I'm taking - Cymbalta for about the last 6 months, Celexa before that.

Any ideas of how I might prevent motion sickness, aside from, um, if I were to stop playing these kinds of games? I know there's medication to address motion-sickness, but I've often heard that it can cause drowsiness.

Also, any ideas on what might be causing it? I mean, it seems like it's really only been an issue for the last year or so, whereas before that I was pretty immune.

Non-drowsy motion sickness remedies?

Gucky — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 12:46:42 -0800

Besides chemicals that make me nap all day, what can I do to keep from hurling on flights? I travel frequently for business, often same day travel. If I take Dramamine or Antivert, I can't work on the plane, as I get too sleepy. And if I have a presentation right after the meeting, forget it.

If I take nothing, well, the embarassment factor and the discomfort is too much. Especially since I often travel with coworkers.

I'm desperate enough that I'm looking at those bracelets they sell in "Sky Mall" and thinking, "Well, that might work."

Being able to do roller coasters or the tea cups at Disney would be a personal life bonus.

Anyone with motion sickness found the panacea?

Do you have any tips for combating motion sickness caused by video games?

Keyser Soze — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 16:03:23 -0800

My mom gets sick when she watches videogames. She has had this since Wolfenstein 3D. Side scroller games and fixed view games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon do not affect her.

I picked up Prince of Persia, the new one, and I would really like for her to be able to play. Refresh rate is 85hz, vertical sync on, what else can I do to help?