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Motion Sickness in Children
Preventing and Managing Motion Sickness
By Felicia Hodges
Whether you're setting out for a family ski trip, day at the beach or trek across country to visit Grandma, packing up the family car is an exciting time for kids and adults. Marking interesting sights (and rest stops) on your map may help get you in a travel frame of mind, but nothing can make you feel like bagging the whole car trip idea faster than traveling with a child pale and miserable from motion sickness.
Motion sickness – whether it is caused by car, airplane, train or luxury liner travel – occurs when fluid in the inner ear gets a little too turbulent. Normally, the fluid contained in the semicircular canals helps us keep our balance, but in folks who are susceptible to motion sickness, the fluid makes waves and upsets the balance, causing dizziness, nausea, hyperventilation and sometimes, heavy sweating. Although it is more common in adults (and rare in children under 2), children between 2 and 12 can be affected.
But don't despair if car trips make your child absolutely miserable. When your little one loses his lunch during the trip and you suspect the culprit may be motion sickness, any or the following remedies can help make your child more comfortable while keeping your vacation plans on track.
According to Debra Perricelli, doctor of naturopathy and co-owner of Firm Foundations Herbal Supplement and Health Food Store in Raleigh, N.C., ginger has been used for thousands of years to fight nausea. Sea sick Asian sailors would chew on the plant's root to calm their bellies.
"Most people don't want to deal directly with the root, so supplements that contain ginger come in handy," Perricelli says. She recommends natural supplements like Ginger Trips by Solaray, which come in handy wafers that are simply chewed as needed. "Homeopathic remedies like Natra-Bio's Nausea and Vomiting Relief are very good," she says. With ginger root, fool's parsley, meadow saffron, dandelion and May Apple, these drops can be taken sublingually (under the tongue) by adults and children ages 2 through 12. "Children can also take crystallized ginger," she says. "It is easier for kids to take because it is naturally sweet."
