Asymmetrical Information

Could this be the real reason you needed to buy a car rathter than rent one?

Pinker presents the same theory in _How_the_Mind_Works_, though not quite as colorfully. As that work is something of an extended lit review he probably picked up the theory somewhere else himself.

Are you driving or riding while someone else drives? For many people that does make a difference.

I believe that the vision problem ("the spins") that you describe is called nystagmus. It's used in field sobriety tests but can also be caused by brain damage or a ride on a roller coaster. People that get it from brain damage later in life have a very hard time, but those that get it early enough ("congenital") may have it all their lives but don't get dizzy or nauseous from it, because their brain adjusted almost from the start. It's also used by vets to tell when a dog may have brain damage from being hit by a car. I don't know if ingesting a neurotoxin causes it.

The theory you propose is, in fact, a common explanation...

In a Season 3 Mythbusters episode, they found that ginger pills (ginger being a traditional eastern sea-sickness treatment) were an effective homeopathic remedy for both of the casts' motion-sickness victims -- without the side effects of drowsiness and loss of coherency.

FYI, YMMV, etc...

they found that ginger pills (ginger being a traditional eastern sea-sickness treatment) were an effective homeopathic remedy

No, they didn't. They found that ginger pills were effective remedy. They didn't find that they were an effective homeopathic remedy because its mechanism cannot possibly be connected with the idea of homeopathy. There are plenty of good old-fashioned allopathic explanations for it, though.

I used to suffer greatly from motion sickness, but when I lived on Long Island and had to commute into Manhattan, I looked out the windows of the train. After several weeks, I was able to read slightly, reading one paragraph, then looking out the window it I felt the least bit queasy, and so on. After a six month progression, I could read the entire trip. I can read on airplanes now. What I haven't tried is deep sea fishing again. My last experience was very negative, with me feeding the fishes the entire trip.

Lying down would help, as did alcohol.

How in the world did you meet up with someone upstate?

Yeah, I think homeopathic would be more like taking something that mimics the symptoms. Taking alcohol to prevent vertigo.

Ginger probably reduces your sense of balance/orientation so that the rapid shifting doesn't cause your visual sense and interal compass to get out of sync.

Megan, I'm going to be in the city friday night, any chance of meeting up?

You feel naseous this time of year when you're up and around late enough to watch twenty-somethings decorate the streets. And you want us to believe that it has to do with riding in cars?

;-)

Your explanation is indeed one of the generally accepted ones. From what I've read, the early development of the big-screen-moving-seat type of adventure ride was fraught with trouble, because when the video got the tiniest bit out of sync with the seat motion it turned into the greatest motion sickness inducer ever.

The whole effect is mediated through muscarinic neurotransmission, at least partly, which is the reason for scopolamine patches. It's an across-the-board blocker of muscarinic receptors - of course, hitting all of them like that simultaneously leads to other side effects, too.

I used to work in the muscarinic field (when it was a possible Alzheimer's therapy), and around that time I went out deep-sea fishing for the first time. Knowing the mechanism of what then happened to me did not, in the tiniest bit, ameliorate one bit of it.

I remember seeing this explanation in one of Joel Achenbach's "Why Things Are" columns. I looked it up, and the column in the May 21, 1993 issue of the Washington Post.

Achenbach himself preferred a more general explanation: "Our vestibular system is designed to keep us upright, focused and balanced. Excessive rocking and rolling and bobbing and weaving is reckless and dangerous and our vestibular system makes sure we stop, by creating motion sickness. Certainly we were never designed to do anything so dangerous as drive at 65 miles an hour down a road."

I don't get the deep-sea fishing problem. Aren't you on deck the whole time? You can see the horizon and the boat's movement, so how is anything out of sync? I've never been sick on the deck of the boat, even with a fancy lunch and a glass of wine, or when pounding a dingy through some early March waves. But I do get sick in jiggly movies (Blair Witch and Flight 93) because the screen is big enough (and the room dark enough) to limit external movement references.

"the spins" seems pretty mild. Have you ever had "the whirling pit"?

"the spins" seems pretty mild. Have you ever had "the whirling pit"?

Rob,

That's what I thought too, but with all the cockamamie motions on a fishing boat, it was just too much. On my sailboat, I am fine as long as I can see the horizon, but going belowdecks (crawling in the cuddy) and I get queasy if still at the mooring. Sailing is not a problem because of the regularity of the motion.

My first bout with motion sickness was when I was 21 and was standing brig watch in the fantail of the aircraft carrier (aft end of the ship). Truly bizarre combination of complex motions at that point of a relatively large vessel. I was reading a paperback under a dim light bulb, and all of a sudden, whoops! Eight years later I had an interesting!? time on a 6-month cruise in the Med (Marine Corps Battalion Landing Team, if you must know). Pull out from shore, and I would be queasy for 3 days, concentrating on not heaving, and eating saltines and lying flat on my bunk as much as possible. After three days I was fine, until we reached a port or went ashore with an amphibious landing, after which I would go through the same routine once we pulled out again (we had six operations and seven port calls).

I'm fortunate that it takes a lot of motion over which I have no control to get motion sickness, because Dramamine has an interesting effect on me:

It makes me nauseous, but prevents me from vomiting. Seriously. Taking dramamine makes me feel like I've just gone from San Francisco to Bolinas on Highway 1 at high speed as a passenger. But I will not be able to vomit; I'll just really, really want to.

They didn't find that they were an effective homeopathic remedy because its mechanism cannot possibly be connected with the idea of homeopathy.

You'd be surprised what's possible when one types with only five hours of sleep under the hatch.

(I'm better rested today, for whatever that's worth...)

I sail a lot and am susceptible to motion sickness in heavy seas but only, as with Rex, when I am below decks with my eyes open. I can lie down in an enclosed cabin and sleep quite comfortably in heavy seas. I have noticed that once I develop sea-sickness symptoms it takes a long time to recover. And taking dramamine is useless once I'm sick.

A medicine I was introduced to that is fabulous - prevents motion sickness and has none of the usual side-effects - is cinnarazine (brand name: Stugeron). Unfortunately you cannot get it in the US. I have acquired it in Canada, the UK, and Bermuda.

I, too, get queasy belowdecks at a dock - I damned near upchucked on the tourist attraction square rigger at Fisherman's Wharf when I went below to look at all the museum-type artifacts.

So, stay out of IMAX theaters. I had to close my eyes repeatedly the one and only time I've gone into an IMAX show. The screen is so large that your peripheral vision shows the same motion that the center screen does, but your inner ear says, "no, you're not moving".

OTOH, I have a ball on the virtual motion machines like the one in the Luxor - my eyes and inner ear agree, so it's a blast.

Ginger pills really do work for all forms of nauseau, and they are a lot cheaper than Dramamine. Give 'em a try.

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