Use ginger to reduce motion sickness
Ginger is good for car sickness. People have pointed out that if you feel nauseous while in a car on a winding road (or any other situation such as on a boat, after riding a roller coaster, etc), you can simply put a piece of raw ginger in your mouth and suck on its juices slowly to decrease nausea. If you like the taste of raw ginger, or if you need a little more than a trickle of juices in your mouth because you get very car sick, or if you simply don’t know where to spit out a piece of ginger you’ve already sucked on, you can chew and eat the ginger as well. Personally I love eating ginger, and plan on putting some chopped ginger cubes in my car as a snack for longer trips in the mountains.
Here’s a little background information on what causes motion sickness: “All motion sickness results from your body sensing a discrepancy between what you see (in this case, the inside of a car, which tells your brain that you’re sitting still) and what you feel (your body’s vestibular system, which senses balance from your inner ear, tells your brain that you’re moving). The conflict between what you see and what you feel triggers the production of a neurotransmitter, likely mistaken by your body as a signal of hallucinogenic poisoning, so your body tries to rid itself of whatever is causing the disorienting condition.” (1)
As a tangent, simply from the above definition of motion sickness, we can deduce that looking out the window at objects that are moving as expected (in the correct direction and speed, exactly opposite of the direction and speed that you’re traveling) when your body is in motion, can reduce motion sickness. Basically, stop looking at the inside of the car, and stop reading! Another way to reduce motion sickness is to sleep, during which you aren’t looking at anything, so the conditions for motion sickness cannot occur.
I’m actually fairly unfamiliar with the chemical properties of ginger that reduce nausea, but from a quick search any form of ginger will do. A lot of websites suggest ginger pills or supplements, or putting some in your food before a trip, but raw ginger cubes or slices could be a much more cost effective and natural way to reduce motion sickness. I especially like being able to occasionally grab a chunk of ginger to chew on as a snack on trips.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 01:02 and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.