What do a camel as well as a ship have in common and what distinguishes the whale from man? For Lawrence of Arabia the camel was the core of the “evil”, for the English kings the navigation. The whale, although it is also a mammal, has no more problems with this: we are talking about kinetosis. The term was derived from the Greek word for moving “kinein”. In English, the term is translated as “motion sickness“. In this country, it is referred to as motion sickness, seasickness, air sickness or motion sickness.
When the organ of balance in the inner ear rebels
The first signs of motion sickness are yawning, pallor, fatigue and headache. If the traveler is more severely affected, nausea and vomiting should be expected. The cause is a conflict in the brain, in our “control center”. This gets a “data conflict” reported: Eyes and vestibular organ report different states. When driving a car, the eyes report movement, which the equilibrium organ in the inner ear does not detect. On ships, this “data salad” behaves in exactly the opposite way. Kinetosis is consequently a conflict of mismatched sensory impressions.
Kinetosis: infants not affected
The organ of balance is part of the inner ear and consists of three arcades that are at right angles to each other, like the walls of a room. The ducts contain a gel-like mass. If this mass starts to move, fine hairs in the semicircular canals transmit this to the brain. Infants do not suffer from kinetosis because their vestibular organ is not yet sufficiently developed. Since the sensory organs also “age” as part of the natural aging process, older people are less likely to suffer from kinetosis. During sleep, the organ of balance also sleeps. Sensitive people can therefore only be recommended to take a ferry ride at night.
Otherwise, the following applies to kinetosis: concentrate on the movement of the vehicle, so you unite your sensory impressions!
Whales do not get seasick
Scientists have reported in the journal Nature (417, 163 – 166, 09 May 2002) that the archways of whales, whose ancestors were land creatures, have reduced in size in a rapid evolutionary step after the “step into the sea”. Had they remained as large as before, the world’s largest mammals would be dogged by permanent kinetosis as they twisted and turned in the cool water.
