Air Sickness: What can you do to stop it?
What causes air sickness? There will be moments where the person will feel that their body seems to be shaking or moving and sometimes it appears or feels like its still. Air sickness is a unwanted sensation felt during air travel, to be more specific this can be called ‘motion sickness’ and can be considered to be a normal response of a healthy body. This doesn’t happen to everyone, it can only happen with a few people. It occurs when the body’s central nervous system begins to receive conflicting messages that includes the muscles, inner ear and eyes that affect the equilibrium and balance.
When it comes to your body’s maintenance in equilibrium and balance, your inner ear is the most important because it has sensors for linear and angular motion. Motion sickness is both a physical and mental reaction to the events such as flying. In most cases, being air sick is caused psychologically. The fear of that settles in your brain causes your body to react, which causes you to feel sick to your stomach.
Studies have shown that fear; psychological reactions and stress are the main causes of being air sick. Your brain that is already affected emotionally can cause a disruption that can create these conflicting signals that your eyes and ears receive so it’s very important that whenever you’re travelling, that you try and relax. Some people would have motion sickness because of the fear of flying. If you do suffer from aerophobia then it would be best to have a mild sedative before you board the plane.
There are some who don’t always result to feeling physically sick. There are those who feel the need to swallow more due to a dry throat, feel light headed or nauseated or tend to sweat a lot during their travels.
So what can you do to stop being air sick? There are many effective ways to avoid it, here are a few that you can try.
• Avoid eating too much before boarding the plane.
One of the main contributors to feeling motion sickness is a full stomach, so as much as possible try to avoid stuffing yourself with food before you board a plane. The same goes for drinking water or any other beverages. Alcohol should be avoided completely.
• Stay completely still during takeoff.
After making sure that your seatbelt has been secured and the lights go off for takeoff, stay completely still when the airplane begins to rise and if it makes you feel any better, close your eyes and take soothing breaths. Any sudden movement made by the plane can most likely cause nausea or being air sick. This is all psychological, so when you feel that the plane is rising, just pretend that you’re sitting elsewhere and not in actual plane.
• Take a tablet.
There are a number of anti-airsickness tablets that you can buy before your trip. There are also special wrist bands being sold in many airports that are believed to reduce any risk of being air sick.
Nothing can be more troublesome than be sick during your travels, literally. There are some people who can easily get nauseated or ill during a vacation – not because of the different air or scenery, but because of the trip heading to the destination. For some people, air sickness is a big problem and can be serious to the point where it affects that person the very moment they set foot into a plane. No one wants to suffer from being air sick when one is about to go on vacation. You just can’t afford to ruin the whole trip because of being air sick.
