Ethical WickedHow to Deal With (Avoid) Seasickness
Nothing can spoil a day of diving like a case of motion sickness. When it happens at sea, we refer to it as mal de mer or sea sickness. Whatever you call it, it makes you feel awful and miserable. This article will explain what it it, the symptoms and how to deal with it and how to prevent it altogether, so that you can concentrate on enjoying your diving adventures! There is never a time or a place where we can guarantee there someone will not get sick – except on land!
What is Seasickness?
In simple terms, seasickness occurs when the body, the inner ear and the eyes all send different signals to the brain. The constantly changing movement stimulates receptors in the brain, leading to confusion, queasiness, headaches, dizziness, nausea, dry-heaving and vomiting. The brain begins to malfunction as the normal, land-based environment it is accustomed to suddenly begins to act differently. Your visual system recognizes things like furniture and cabin walls as stable, while your inner ear is sending strong messages to the brain that they are not.
Our body metabolisms are nearly as unique as our personalities. Some preventatives will work for some people and not others. Others will work, though with varying degrees of effectiveness. You may have to do some trials and experimenting to find what works best for you. Not everything works the same for everybody.
Symptoms
Of course, the best way to prevent seasickness is to take preventative action, but what happens if you find yourself becoming seasick anyway. The best course to take is to recognize and react to any symptoms as early as possible. What are the early warning signs? Yawning, drowsiness, fatigue and lethargy are the early indications of seasickness. The problem is, these signs can be hard to recognize, especially if you are already tired. Most people don’t detect oncoming seasickness until there are more obvious symptoms, such as stomach discomfort (nausea) and slight sweating, excessive salivating or belching. As you start to become seasick, you’ll find that performing various tasks requiring mental concentration becomes more difficult.
Since a number of factors contribute to seasickness and can trigger symptoms, it makes sense to adhere to the following guidelines to reduce the chances of suffering from it.
•. Get plenty of rest before you go out on the water. Weariness and exhaustion can make you more susceptible to other things that can bring on motion sickness. When people join our Similan Liveaboard trips, they can often be arriving right off a flight from Europe or America. Please take time to rest!
•. Do not eat greasy or acidic foods for several hours before your dive trip. This includes drinking coffee. You don’t want to have a lot of acid or heavy, slow to digest foods rolling around in your stomach while you are rolling around on the sea. Heavy, greasy foods like bacon and eggs, sausage, waffles or pancakes with syrup, alone or combined with acidic juices like orange juice, can wreak havoc on your system and end up recycled as lunch for the fishes. Eat less acidic fruits (apples, bananas, pears, grapes, melons, etc.), breads (muffins, croissants, rolls), cereals and grains as alternatives. Milk, water, apple juice, cranberry juice and other low acid beverages are gentler alternatives to orange juice or grapefruit juice.
•. Prepare and set up your dive equipment as soon as possible when you get on board to reduce the amount of time spent on deck focusing on static objects or digging around in your dive bag, where you can’t see and anticipate the boat’s movements.
•. Drink Coke or Pepsi. These two drinks help reduce the chances of getting sick because they contain phosphoric acid, which is an ingredient in Emetrol, a drug admisistered to control vomiting.
•. If your indigestion becomes unbearable take an indigestion remedy.
•. Do not miss a meal before diving. An empty stomach can be almost as bad as one with the wrong types of food in it. Give your stomach acids something to work on. Then give your stomach time to begin digesting your meal. Get up a little earlier if you have to, in order to eat, relax before going out on the water. Try not to overeat and get bloated.
•. Drink plenty of water. Even partial dehydration lowers your body’s resistance to the stressful factors caused by the boat trip. Take lots of water with you and sip it regularly.
•. Do not drink an excessive amount of alcohol the night before diving. Alcohol tends to dehydrate the body. Also alcohol can prevent the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage of sleep, the one in which you dream and your brain rests. You may feel tired and not alert after just a few drinks If you do plan on drinking, make every third drink a glass of water. It will reduce dehydration and your chances of a hangover the next morning.
•. Avoid gasoline or diesel fumes. They can make your nausea much worse. Stay out of direct sunlight as much as possible and avoid becoming overheated and dehydrated.
•. If possible, avoid the cabin and other enclosed spaces. Sometimes, a breezy spot in the sun may be preferable to a shady spot in a stuffy cabin. The open air and ability to look out over the horizon are often more helpful than being in a shady spot, which can be stuffy and enclosed, limiting your view of the horizon and perhaps making you more prone to seasickness.There will be less motion towards the center of the boat, both horizontally and vertically, and it will increase with the height of the waves. Avoid the upper decks as the higher you go, the more you will experience swaying back and forth. Horizontally, you want to be, towards the center of the boat, rather that at the bow or stern. The more sensitive to motion sickness you are, the closer you need to be towards the center, which is the calmest part of the boat.
•. If you are beginning to feel a bit queasy, stand up and look out over the horizon. Despite what you might think, sitting or laying down is the worst thing you can do at this point as you will feel much worse even faster.
•. When the boat is rolling with the waves rather than moving under its own power and you are standing on deck, possibly getting hot, your resistance to motion sickness diminishes rapidly. Reduce that exposure time to an absolute minimum.
•. If someone onboard is overcome by sea sickness, move away from them at once! Unfortunately, most of us can handle nausea very well until we see other people around us starting to vomit. We then have a sympathetic reaction and succumb as well. It could be the sound, the smell, the sight, or a combination of them that triggers the same response in us. You don’t have to be close to your buddy at this time. There is nothing you can do to help. If you feel nauseous and about to succumb, please avoid the entry and exit areas of the boat. Hang your head over the sides of the boat.
•. If you are embarking on a liveaboard, don’t choose a berth in the forward cabin. Select a berth in a cabin as close to the centre of the boat as possible as there is less pitching motion in this part of the boat.
•. When onboard, sleep on your back. This seems to prevent the stomach from bouncing around too much.
•. Have your ears cleaned before a long boat trip or liveaboard. This has helped many people reduce their proneness to seasickness by allowing the balance mechanism in the ears to work better.
•. Be in good physical condition. It reduces your chances of becoming seasick and also reduces its debilitating effects on you if you are.
•. Volunteer to help steer the boat. Steering necessitates looking at the horizon, it keeps you busy thus taking your mind off any impending or existing nausea, and provides anticipation of what the next movement of the boat will be. If you are not able to steer, it may help to imagine you are steering the boat: put your hands in front of you as if there were were a steering wheel, and make the accompanying slight movements of the whole body.
•. Consider alternative therapies such as hypnotism, Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). EFT in particular will help before you get on the boat as you will have a technique for dealing with seasickness if it strikes when on the boat.
Medications and Natural Preventatives
Ginger is a natural preventative. It soothes a queasy stomach and has no side effects. You can get it in pill form, tablets or powder, or as ginger root in many supermarkets or grocery stores.
Some doctors recommend that you can take it 12-24 hours before, as preventing sea sickness is easier than curing it. Somewhere from 1 gram up to 4 grams per day of powdered ginger is recommended. Some studies seem to indicate that ginger is more effective in the reduction of vomiting and sweating than nausea and vertigo, although they reduce those symptoms as well. You can try ginger biscuits and ginger ale, although their lower ginger content may not be as effective. They do work for some people though.
Eating peppermint together with ginger is said to be even more effective. Since mint does have some of the same calming qualities as ginger, this may be true. Perhaps it is just the belief that it works that is effective. Regardless, it is an inexpensive and pleasant addition. An added benefit is making your breath sweeter.
Another recommended treatment is wearing an accu-pressure wrist band. It applies pressure to a particular point on your wrist which can prevent the feeling of nausea.
Another strange treatment is to immerse your feet in ice cold water, this seems to work on some when they are actually feeling queasy, rather than as a preventative.
There are other preventatives, such as over the counter and prescription medications. Most should be taken in advance and not on an empty stomach. Be sure to read the instructions. Dramamine is one that has been used for years. Meclizine and Bonine are also effective. You can find them at most pharmacies. Be sure to read the warnings about seasickness medications as some of them may not be suitable for you if you suffer from various conditions.
For example, Scopolamine is a prescription drug in the family of chemicals known as belladonna alkaloids and should not be should not be administered to people with glaucoma. Its side effects can include dry mouth (the most common side effect,) dilated pupils with blurred vision, drowsiness, disorientation, confusion, memory disturbances, dizziness, restlessness, hallucinations, and difficulty urinating. When you stop using Scopolamine you may also experience disorientation, confusion, memory disturbances, dizziness, and restlessness.
Scopolamine’s side effects are not predictable. You may have used it before without any problems and then still develop an unwanted reaction. Some of the side effects are similar to the effects of nitrogen narcosis, therefore if you’re having a mild reaction to the scopolamine (and maybe not even be aware of it) the reaction could become more pronounced at depth. In scuba diving, while happening deep in the sea, so called seasickness is not caused by motion sickness, but by unusual pressure, temperature, stance and medium
These drugs are not commonly available in Thailand or our Komodo Dive Center
If you do become seasick, remember to replace the nutrients lost from your system due to repeated vomiting. Even if you don’t feel like it, force yourself to consume regular amounts of fluids that include glucose and electrolytes. Doing so will help alleviate continued bouts of nausea, strengthen your system, and move you along on the road to recovery, leaving you free to enjoy your diving adventures!
