• • • What Is Travel Sickness?
    • Travel Sickness Treatment Options
    • What Is The Difference Between Travel Sickness and Sea Sickness?
    • Travel Sickness Symptoms
    • Travel Sickness Causes

What Is Travel Sickness?

Travel sickness is a condition that affects people travelling by various means, resulting in a feeling of dizziness and nausea. Particularly where people are travelling for long periods of time, these symptoms can be enough to dissuade patients from setting off on their trips and have a very tangible impact upon the freedom to travel with confidence.

Travel Sickness Treatment Options

The most commonly suggested advice for combating the symptoms of the illness is to ensure that you can see the movement that your body is experiencing. On a boat, step onto the deck and watch the horizon. In a car, sit in the front and look out into the distance. On a train, sit next to a large window and be sure to be in a seat that is facing forwards. This helps to avoid the conflict that occurs in your body and causes travel sickness.

However, some people who experience travel sickness regularly do not find that these tips work for them and may find a pharmaceutical solution more effective. The range of medicines available to treat travel sickness do not tend to eliminate the conflicting messages to the brain, but rather they fight off the symptoms of the illness to make travelling bearable. One such travel sickness treatment is Scopoderm TTS, a convenient patch that can be applied to the body to stop the symptoms of vomiting and nausea.

What Is The Difference Between Travel Sickness and Sea Sickness?

Travel sickness, sea sickness and motion sickness are all caused by this same disagreement between what the senses perceive to be happening and what is actually happening to your body. Whilst your eyes may tell you that you are stationary, your inner-ear fluid tells your brain that you are moving. Since these varied forms of the illness have the same cause, the treatment is the same for each.

Travel Sickness Symptoms

Usually, people who suffer from travel sickness will experience a feeling of nausea soon after they begin travelling, which will intensify over time. Eventually, this may lead to vomiting. There is some evidence to suggest that some people can have a tendency to encounter these symptoms regularly, and these people in particular should seek a reliable treatment before symptoms develop.

Travel Sickness Causes

The human body uses fluid in small canals in the inner ear to monitor balance – as the fluid moves around, the brain interprets this as movement. Travel sickness is the result of a disagreement in the body between what the eyes perceive to be happening and what the inner ear reports to be happening.

Whilst sitting in a car, train or boat, for example, the body is in constant motion and the inner ear reports this to the brain. However, our eyes are looking at the inside of the car, train or boat and, as a result they tell the brain that the body isn’t moving at all. This conflict results in the symptoms of nausea, vertigo and vomiting.