Prevent travel sickness in children

Vacation time, travel time. Especially children make long car trips dizziness and abdominal pain. The phenomenon is called travel sickness. But a few tips can prevent nausea and vomiting.

"Traveling sickness is particularly likely to affect children between the ages of two and twelve," reports the Association of Paediatricians (BVKJ). Neither reading nor watching movies on your smartphone are the best ways to distract your car. Because exactly these methods promote the travel sickness.

Travel sickness can be distressing for children. A few precautions can help. Image: Marén Wischnewski / Fotolia)

Whether or how bad children in the car is bad, but it is quite different. Even doctors do not know a blanket explanation for the fact that some are not affected at all and in others nausea and vomiting occur all the more. "In some, the balance organ is apparently so sensitive that especially the centrifugal forces in curves can lead to nausea," said Hermann Josef Kahl, pediatrician in Dusseldorf.

According to Kahl, the so-called "motion sickness" (kinetosis) is very unpleasant, but harmless in most cases. The nausea is caused by a "confusion" of the brain, because each person is usually based on the one hand by the perception of the eyes and on the other by the sense of balance in the inner ear. What matters is, however, which information is passed on from the orientation systems to the brain: if the received stimuli match, everything is fine. However, when the brain receives conflicting signals, it switches to an "alert state" and as a result, the body reacts with nausea, dizziness, and general malaise. In the car, this happens relatively quickly when there is more movement than can be seen, which is why children are particularly distressed when reading, for example.

Better look out the window than read 
Nevertheless, according to Kahl, parents can do a lot to make their journey in the car a little more pleasant. Above all, a lot of fresh air is important, so you should take breaks at regular intervals, in which the children can move outside the car. In addition, the expert recommends that vulnerable children should not eat so much before a long drive. It is also helpful if parents let their children look out of the window as much as possible - because curves and bumps are also perceived visually, whereby a difference in perception between eye and inner ear can be avoided. On the other hand, looking at things downwards tends to promote nausea, which is why books, laptops, tablets and board games on the go, especially for vulnerable children, are not an appropriate pastime for driving. (Sb)