Motion sickness habituation exercises

Discussion in 'All Things Boats & Boating' started by laukejas, May 10, 2015.

  1. laukejas
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    laukejas Senior Member

    Hi all,

    As many people nowadays, I have quite extreme motion sickness. If I turn around 5 times, I get sick to my stomach for an hour. When I was a kid, I couldn't even drive in a car without getting sick in 5 minutes. That passed, but I never could endure carousels and other attractions in amusement parks, flying, or taking off-shore boat trips. So I learned to avoid such things.

    However, now that I got into sailing, this became a very serious problem. Few years back, I went on a one-day sailing trip in a training crew aboard small schooner in Baltic Sea. Although I took ginger, medication, and followed as many motion sickness prevention guidelines, I soon "fed the fish", and had to spend half the day lying in bunk, totally defeated. It was a horrible way to spend a dream-come-true trip.
    An opportunity to sail in that schooner arose again, one month from now. I want to go, more than anything, but I know I'll go down again. Medication, ginger and usual advice helps somewhat, but not enough.

    And anyways, I hate depending on medication or stuff like wristbands and so on. I want to train myself to overcome this problem.


    I was quite shocked to find that while motion sickness is very common problem, there is very little information on exercises to beat it. There is this Puma Method website, but I found too little reviews to risk spending 35$.
    After all, it is quite common for sailors who go out to the sea to get sick for first few days/weeks, and then "get sea legs". Some people get adjusted quicker, some slower, some not at all. But for most, it works. That means conditioning can beat this problem.

    A friend of mine, a sailor, said he does an exercise every morning: standing up, turns around in circles. 10 times clockwise, a short break, then 10 times counter-clockwise. He said it helped him, and suggested me to try the same, starting with fewer turns, and increasing them everyday, as much as I can bear. I already started it, and I hate it (feel sick for hours), but maybe it will pay off.

    Does anybody here know any motion sickness habituation exercises? Anything you'd like to share?

    A Note: please don't sidetrack this discussion into consideration of medication, physical devices and so on. There is plenty info on that, no need to go about it again. Let's discuss exercises specifically, please :)
     
  2. Ad Hoc
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    Ad Hoc Naval Architect

    It might be worth while having a read of these:

    Benson, A. J. 1999, Motion sickness. Ernesting, J., Nicholson, J. N., and Rainford, D. Aviation Medicine, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.

    and

    Stott, J. R. R. 1991 Prevention and treatment of motion sickness: nonpharmacological therapy. AGARD (Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development) Lecture Series 175: Motion Sickness: Significance in Aerospace Operations and Prophylaxis.

    Benson notes: the most potent therapeutic measure is adaptation to the provocative motion. This is “nature’s” own cure and is the preferred method of preventing sickness..

    And Stott goes on to note: Adaptation formally refers to the increase in tolerance to a nauseogenic stimulus that occurs over a period of several days or even weeks of repeated exposure. .

    They describe basically what it you are after in a more scientific manner. Thus you may be able to glean something more akin to your own body's response that may assist you in reducing your susceptibility of motion sickness.

    Good luck.
     
  3. rasorinc
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    rasorinc Senior Member

  4. laukejas
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    laukejas Senior Member

    Ad Hoc, thanks, I red paper by Benson, but the second one, by Stott, I can't find it anywhere. Do you have a source?

    Rasorinc, thank you for the link, these are good tips, but I knew most of them, and they only mention that thee are those exercises and that they should work.


    I hope to find specific exercises with instructions on how to perform them correctly. Only Puma website claims to have such information (as far as I have found yet).

    Keep going, please! :)
     
  5. Ad Hoc
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    Ad Hoc Naval Architect

    The entire source is listed above.
     
  6. laukejas
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    laukejas Senior Member

    I'm sorry, I meant, where can I read the whole thing? I couldn't find it on google, but maybe I'm not searching right.
     
  7. Ad Hoc
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    Ad Hoc Naval Architect

  8. ImaginaryNumber
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    ImaginaryNumber Imaginary Member

    You appear to have done pretty exhaustive research, so probably not much I can add. But I thought I'd mention this site as it gives a more wholistic approach to motion-sickness management than some, though not the specific exercises you are looking for. Let us know if you find something that works for you. Good Luck. [​IMG]

    http://www.mahina.com/seasick.html

    Edit: Some cruising sailors who are susceptible to motion-sickness will anchor out in a rolly area a few days before leaving on a passage, and sleep aboard, to acclimate to a small amount of motion first.
     

  9. laukejas
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    laukejas Senior Member


    Thank you both. I looked through the information, and it was helpful, however, it did not contain any useful information about exercise-induced adaptation.

    However, I just found a research paper which includes description and operation of 3 specific exercises. It claims 90% success ratio. I have already started doing it.

    It can be found here. Does anybody have a comment or something to add?
     
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