How your smart phone could help your motion sickness in moving vehicles

(NEXSTAR) — Do you get dizzy while looking at your phone while riding as a passenger in a car?

That could be a sign of motion sickness, a common, yet complex, condition that can have varying severities of symptoms to go along with it.

Managing the symptoms can involve sitting in certain seats in moving vehicles, hydration, avoiding empty or too full of a stomach, or even avoiding triggering events like amusement parks, large movie theater screens or even just putting your phone down while in a car.

“A lot of people with motion sickness tend not to have a problem when they’re driving themselves, but if they’re a passenger, it’s more likely and the location in the vehicle in can vary,” Dr. Neil Cherian, staff neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic, said. “Things that help to mitigate in terms of that kind of travel, make sure you’re facing forward … things that can also exacerbate it are stress, fatigue, alcohol.”

Though looking at your phone in the car is not the sole trigger, manufacturers have implemented new technology to try and help mitigate the symptoms.

Cherian said that while smartphones have become difficult to put down while riding in a car, some operating systems have introduced a setting called “vehicle motion cues” in recent updates.

“There are some newer technologies available on numerous platforms where there are lines or dots that move across the screen,” the doctor added. “It’s a method to fool the brain to say, ‘Okay, I’m moving, the environment is moving, but at least I have something consistent to pay attention to.”

These animated dots on your phone screen try to counteract the triggers that are causing discomfort and motion sickness. While the setting came out relatively recently, Cherian says that some people do find it as a useful tactic to combat their motion sickness.

“Talking to some of my patients, it can be helpful. I spoke to my sister, who actually has motion sensitivity and uses it, and says it’s quite helpful for her,” he noted.

Other technologies like acupressure bands, or motion control bands, can also provide stimulation to pressure points to help with the symptoms.

Though no clear cause is know for motion sickness, symptoms can manifest in a variety of different ways. It can be as mild as just nausea, all the way to sever headaches, sweating and vomiting.

“It’s like that red light on your dashboard in your car that says something’s wrong. It may not tell you what is wrong, but it tells you there is something going wrong. Motion perception is a relay between the inner ear, the visual system, and other parts of the balance which includes what we call proprioception,” the doctor continued. “When there is a conflict between these pieces, the error signal can come about.”

And while people who have experienced inner ear damage, head trauma, or migraines are highly susceptible to it, others can grow in or out of the symptoms.

“If somebody is an adult and they’re seeing you for motion sickness, I’ll go back to when did this first manifest. I’ll go back and say, ‘Did you ever have it as a kid?’ and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, but I grew out of it.'” Cherian said. “Other people that didn’t have it as a kid, it came on later in life.”

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