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Motion Sickness Relief

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Motion Sickness Relief

I have always had motion sickness issues. I can't go on any of the "spinny" rides at the amusement park. On my first soaring hang gliding flight (first flight over 15 minutes) I started to feel really bad and eventually vomited. I eventually gave up hang gliding partly due to the rotten feeling I would get on any non-trivial flight.

Head Motion

Nausea can easily be made worse by too much head movement or looking in the wrong place during a turn. You help delay the onset or severity of nausea by using minimal or slow head movements, looking to the inside of a turn, and never looking down during a turn.

Ginger

Several people have had success eating various forms of ginger such as ginger root pills.

ReliefBand®

There are all kinds of ideas such as ginger that people recommend to help with motion sickness but none worked for me. As a private pilot I came across an article about a device that you wear on your wrist like a watch but just the other side. It has a battery in it and gives you a mild electric "shock" to the nerves in the wrist. It REALLY works, at least it does for me. Here's an article published in a respected aviation news site:

AvWeb News Article

They are not cheap - $129 as of this writing (May 2008) but to me it's worth every penny. I can now fly for hours not having to worry about keeping my head still and only looking certain places just to delay the inevitable. With the ReliefBand® I've been able to just fly - and enjoy it. I know sounds like a commercial but it's not. I've gotten nauseous on many flights and vomited on three - all when I wasn't wearing the ReliefBand®. So far I have had no problem at all (yeah) on flights that I was wearing the ReliefBand® (with working batteries).

Sea Bands

I have yet to try these but I'd like to since there are no batteries involved. That's the only downside to the ReliefBand®. If the batteries go dead before or during a flight you are stuck.