Motion sickness, motion sickness, or kinetosis scientifically, got its name from the unpleasant symptoms that sea travelers encountered. Even Hippocrates has a description of seasickness. The famous poet of the Roman Empire, Horace, wrote: "Before seasickness, everyone is equal: the poor and the rich."
Over time, it turned out that the symptoms of motion sickness appear in different situations: when driving in a car, on a train, during a flight in an airplane, and even with a long swing on an ordinary swing. They did not separate these cases into separate categories, the general name remained for "seasickness". The term "disease" used has no pathological meaning, but is used to characterize the emerging and developing symptoms of ailment. Studying the causes of motion sickness, and trying to find a cure for its unpleasant manifestations, scientists did not come to a single conclusion about the cause of the symptoms, but they learned a lot of interesting things about a specific disease.
It turned out that from 5 to 15% of the world's population is susceptible to the disease throughout its life. It turns out that almost every tenth inhabitant of the Earth suffers from motion sickness. Moreover, a survey of sailors showed that 3/4 of them suffer from nausea every time they go to sea, this is especially evident among inexperienced sailors, who sometimes go to sea on charter yacht. It is documented that the famous Admiral Nelson, the traveler and author of the famous theory Charles Darwin, and even the brave H. Columbus suffered from seasickness!
Statistics have shown that women suffer from unpleasant manifestations of motion sickness more often than men, but children aged 2 to 12 suffer the most - more than 80%. Children under 2 years old and people of advanced age practically do not experience unpleasant symptoms of motion sickness. Scientists have put forward several reasons for the manifestation of seasickness. According to one of them, the vestibular apparatus of the human body and its cerebellum (part of the brain) cannot cope with information coming from external receptors (eyes, inner ear, peripheral nervous system). A painful condition when there is a discrepancy between the perception of the vestibular apparatus and the information that the brain receives through the eyes. Like a computer, the system experiences severe overload, which results in rapid breathing, profuse sweating, and pallor.
The appearance of nausea and vomiting dehydrates and depletes the body, plunging the sick into a depressive state. A similar theory explaining the cause of the manifestations of motion sickness is put forward by other scientists. According to research, motion sickness is caused by a disorder of the vestibular apparatus associated with unusual movement. According to scientific justification, as soon as the human body begins to move independently of itself (a trip in any transport, flight in an airplane, etc.), the vestibular apparatus, unable to correlate this movement with muscle movement, begins to "junk", trying to connect other additional regulatory mechanisms. A person, as a result of the "vegetative storm", begins to manifest nausea, in the worst case, vomiting.
There is a separate opinion of neurologists who claim that half of people suffer from seasickness ... through their own fault! It turns out that taking seasickness too seriously increases a person's reaction to any manifestation of rolling, some begin to feel sick even when approaching a ship or an airplane. Don't think about pitching and if someone has an attack of nausea, don't try on their position. The very expectation of an attack of seasickness is an important psychological factor that provokes its appearance.
Seasickness can be very insidious and come on suddenly. There are cases when, regardless of age, a person in a good mood and a relaxed state instantly changes in his face and after a few minutes already lies in the fetal position.
Experienced sailors give some practical tips on how to avoid annoying nausea:
The likelihood of seasickness is directly related to the size of the vessel. It is quite natural that a small boat, like a nutshell, takes off on the smallest wave, while on large cruise liners equipped with special stabilizers, the roll is almost not felt in any rough sea. Thus, the size of the vessel, the state of the sea and the availability of sailing experience affect the degree of resistance to seasickness. On board small yachts, almost everyone is susceptible to motion sickness and nausea, with the exception of the most persistent. It has been proven that the human body is most sensitive to cyclical movements that repeat every 6 seconds. But it is natural for the human body to adapt to the environment. The dynamics of the development of this adaptation has individual characteristics, but as practice shows, an improvement in the general condition occurs on the second or third day, and on the fourth day of sailing, the symptoms of seasickness completely disappear. If residual manifestations of motion sickness appear, you can resort to pharmacological agents that have shown excellent treatment results:
Medication is not a panacea for motion sickness. The effectiveness of any medicine should be tested even before the voyage, as many of them have strong sedative effect. The timing of taking your motion sickness medication is also important. Experienced sailors recommend taking medicines for seasickness not before going to sea (3-4 hours before), but much earlier - at least in the evening, on the eve of the voyage.
Although, according to doctors, the best prevention of seasickness is a good and trained vestibular apparatus. Sports (especially water sports), cycling and even twisting on an office chair train the vestibular apparatus. Skeptics who argue that motion sickness cannot be controlled are offered a counter argument: "And how do pilots, paratroopers, and cosmonauts train their vestibular apparatus, after all!" They are the same people and have the same vegetative system.
According to the experts 2yachts, in recent years methods of psychoprophylaxis and psychotherapy, autogenic training with training in autonomic self-control have become popular. reactions (nausea, vomiting). Be that as it may, a survey of vacationers on sea cruises showed that the greatest inconvenience in travel 80% of tourists called seasickness. The absolute majority added that in a few days, after adaptation, the sea opened up to them all its beauty and wonderful sensations of spaciousness and freshness.