What is it?
Travel sickness, also known medically as kinetosis, is a combination of symptoms that often occur during travel. Many affected persons ask themselves what is behind the travel sickness. Travel sickness is widespread in the population, but it is actually not a real disease and is harmless.
However, it is very unpleasant for the patient. It occurs during shaky bus rides, on winding roads or, in the classic case, on a ship in stormy seas. So it occurs especially on journeys, which is how it got its name.
If it occurs especially during ship journeys, then it is called seasickness. The main cause of motion sickness is a disturbance of the sense of balance. Normally, the brain receives the same information about the position and movements of the body from the organ of balance and the eyes.
However, in motion sickness, the eyes and the sense of balance provide different, contradictory information. The brain therefore has difficulty in processing these signals, which makes you travel sick. In principle, one can therefore say that actually everyone can get travel sickness at any time, even if they have never had any problems before. However, the severity of motion sickness varies greatly from person to person. In addition, age also plays a role in the occurrence of motion sickness.
Symptoms
The symptoms of motion sickness can vary greatly from person to person. This is comparable to the perception of certain objects, which is also very subjective in humans. One person can therefore be affected significantly more and worse than the other.
At the same time, it can happen that one suddenly becomes motion sickness, although one has never had problems with motion sickness before. Typical symptoms of motion sickness are malaise combined with nausea, headache and dizziness (see: Dizziness with nausea). However, these classic symptoms do not have to be expressed in every patient.
Slight manifestations of motion sickness manifest themselves as slight tiredness, frequent yawning and increased sweating, even outbreaks of sweating. If the patient is more severely affected by the travel sickness, symptoms such as paleness, palpitations and heart palpitations, nausea or increased dizziness may become noticeable. Finally, kinetosis can even lead to symptoms such as a drop in circulation or significantly increased breathing (hyperventilation). In the severe form of motion sickness, there is also repeated vomiting and a severe subjective feeling of illness.
