When a Pleasure Cruise is Anything But- Homeopathy for Motion Sickness and Nausea

I live on the coast of Maine and the sight of boats on the harbor and off shore is so alluring. I love sailing and boating, though I don't do it nearly as much as I would like to.






Not all of us step gleefully onto a boat. Sea-sickness can get the best of us. And maybe you or someone you know can't ride in the backseat on any road trip, and forget the thrills of a roller coaster, or ferris wheel. Vomit central!


I bet you can guess what I'm going to say- homeopathy can help! Yes, it's true. It can :) There are a handful of acute remedies for nausea and motion sickness that will help mitigate the effects if the case fits. I can't promise that by using these remedies you will be able to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl without turning green. However, the remedies can certainly help you recover more quickly and may avert you losing your $8.00 french fries...

Cocculus: 
Nausea and motion sickness, often accompanied by vertigo or dizziness. True vertigo is a sense of one's environment spinning around him. You can imagine this sensation after disembarking from a boat, or a particularly spinny ride at the amusement park.

The vertigo is worse sitting, or lying and can be either while in motion on a car, plane, boat etc... or can be a symptom that lingers after. Nausea is also worse from thought or smell of food. There may be a headache from riding as well.

Cocculus is also thought of when symptoms of vertigo, nausea, or headache come about after loss of sleep. Think of staying up nights with a child who is ill, keeping vigil for a loved one, or working late nights and up early mornings.

Overall, cocculus symptoms may be a bit lighter, less 'sick' feeling and more dizzy and mildly nauseous than the next two remedies.

Tabacum: 
Tabacum is for intense nausea from travel sickness: sea, road, or air.   It may be accompanied by a headache, with or without vomiting. Do you know that sinking feeling in your stomach, with a cold clammy sweat? ugh- worst feeling in the world! Tabacum may relieve it.

Any relief comes from being out in the open air and cold applications. One strange, rare, and peculiar symptom is the desire to uncover their abdomen. Think of the little kid who feels nauseous and insists on having his belly exposed. Can you picture that?

Petroleum: 
Yes, this is the remedy made from crude oil. If you can imagine that chemical sick-feeling, then you have a good sense of the nausea that may call for this remedy. It's another option to think about if tabacum doesn't do the trick.

The person feels nauseous riding in a train, car, or airplane. The person who needs petroleum has a sense of inner coldness, and there may be violent vomiting or intense nausea without vomiting. The patient feels better in the open air, staying warm, with their head high (sitting up, as opposed to lying). The better warmth is a good way to differentiate whether to give petroleum or tabacum, as tabacum conditions prefer cold.

Petroleum is a remedy that is used constitutionally for chronic eczema, so this may be a first one to try on someone who has that condition and *also* experiences motion sickness.

Can petroleum be useful for morning sickness in pregnancy? Absolutely!

Homeopathic remedies are indicated by symptoms. When you encounter nausea that fits any of the above remedy pictures, give the remedy a try, even if it didn't originate from motion sickness. 

Allopathic practitioners often try a similar thing with pharmaceuticals, using drugs other than for intended purposes. Unfortunately, this is a dangerous practice as drugs are created in a *completely* opposite manner. Pharmaceutical drugs are designed and tested for very specific conditions, whereas homeopathic remedies are simply natural substances that have been proven to affect (positively) a range of symptoms. This strays into a topic that deserves it's own blog post! So I will leave it at that and keep you curious for more ;)

On that note, remember that if you try a remedy I have suggested here and you don't see results, it is because your patient (or you!) need a different remedy. It would be too much and overwhelming to list 5-10 remedies here. Consider getting a home prescribers guide if you want to know more.

Enjoy these last weeks of summer! I am guest blogging next week on http://www.momnivores-dilemma.com/  about remedies to help those first day and week of school jitters! Check it out- Nicolette is a great supporter of homeopathy and writes about her experiences with her family, autism, and healing.