Motion sickness

It's interesting that you mention sugar levels - I tend to find I'm less travel sick when I've eaten a really big meal beforehand, but never understood why.

Yes I get this.  I prefer to be driven, but some people’s driving makes me feel really ill!  If they’re a smooth driver I’m fine even in the back.  My own driving is generally really slow and smooth, but if it’s busy or dark and there’s lots of headlights or rain glare off puddles I can get so disorientated and feel a combination of nausea, motion sick, dizziness for days after.  A two hour drive last December wiped me out solidly for about four days.  I’m generally ok flying so long as I keep my sugar levels up, but I had a little two hour flight a couple of years ago and get unbelievably motion sick and so disorientated the second I got home (luckily someone else was driving from the airport) I collapsed in a ball on the floor and stayed there for hours.

Video games have the same effect.  I tried call of duty once and had to go to bed for the rest of the day.  Took a sick bowl and everything coz I felt so sick.  

I can go on roller coasters, but nothing that goes back and forth or round in a circle.  

They put some exercise equipment in the playing fields near me a few years ago, and I tried this one where your feet are on the platforms and you hold some handles and do some over the top walking movement.  It must have been because the ground was now further than usual but that too made me motion sick and I had to go straight home and lie down. 

I heat on everything of those microwaveable scarfs and lie in bed with the windows open (which they always are anyway), and find it most helpful when it’s really cold with the wind blowing. If I’ve caught it early it can wear off by the end of the day, but it can go on for up to a week.  If I’ve done a long flight I can feel the movement when I lie down for days.

I went to Switzerland for the first time this year - I loved it We travelled everywhere by train and it's so much more relaxing than messing around with British trains. Reliable, cleaner and much quieter

the holiday was ace - superbly well organised and well planned...errr...by me!

If anyone is keen for a new autistic special interest, then I can highly recommend a look into the integrated transport system of the Swiss railways. Absolutely compelling, and of course, being Swiss, you know it will all work exactly as it should and will all run on time.

It's really strange - boats, ferries and ships all seem to be fine for me. It's mainly cars and coaches.

I've never heard of mal de debarquement syndrome, but it sounds awful! That holiday would be a lot for anyone, but it must be even worse if you're really travel sick. Did you at least get to see some interesting places?

I share your hatred of Superdrug! It doesn't make me dizzy, but I do get quite disorientated and struggle to concentrate on what I'm therefore. Definitely too bright, noisy and smelly (all the mirrors don't help either - it's a big, shiny mess)!

That carpet sounds unpleasant 

I find that too - I'm better in either the front seat, or the middle of the back seat. Having a wider view seems to help for some reason. 

Spinning on office chairs is really relaxing, and it's odd that it doesn't have the same effect on us as the movement of a car. I've read that you can be both under-sensitive and over-sensitive (and can switch between the two), so maybe that explains it

That's really interesting - I'm the same (absolutely fine if I'm the one driving the car, no problem with buses and trains, but struggle with coaches). I've never ridden a motorbike before... I wonder if you're okay with it because you're the driver, like with the car.

I'm lucky, motion or travel sickness is not one of my problems.  But I have seen the effect it has on people.

On my first journey by ferry across the channel from Dover to Calais, I was terrified of being sick but I was OK.  Other people who had a history of motion sickness were well prepared and almost immediately found comfortable places to lie down and didn't move the entire journey. 

I get a delayed sickness- it has some posh name like "mal de debarquement syndrome" - what it basically means is a cumulative effect of travel builds up, and then I get really dizzy when I am lying down in bed, and it feels then like the world is spinning. If it carries on then I can also struggle to stand up/walk straight.

I went on holiday a couple of years ago and went on a crazy number of different modes of transport -- think it was 36 connections in a week - like train, bus, boat, cable car, funicular railway etc and by the end of the week my head was spinning!

However for me the worst by far is lifts! I will choose to walk up and down 7 flights of stairs by the 2nd day on holiday rather than take a lift.

Another really bad place is Superdrug...bright lights, noise, smell of perfumes, and everything I ever want is always on the bottom shelf - when I stand back up again I have to hold onto the shelf.

Oh - there is also a carpet at work that I hate walking on - it has a complicated pattern so overloads me visually and the texture is ever so slightly different to the carpet around it. From talking to colleagues i know it isn't just me with that one!

I've got car sickness sickness since I was a kid. I thought it went away at one point, but I think it may just have been that for ages the only car I really went in was my dad's, and that car just suited me more (it was a big 4x4 so you were sat quite high up able to see the road etc). Then my dad switched cars and suddenly it was really bad again. It's better if I can sit and watch the road in a car or bus/coach, and by doing that, particularly if I can sit at the front, it's sometimes okay, but depends on the journey. I used to love going on the back of my dad's motorbike though and didn't have a problem there.

I also get bad vertigo on escalators and feel like I'm going to fall over (tube stations are the worst). I'm generally not good at things that require balance tbh (I can ride a bike, but it doesn't take much to put me off). But I love spinning in my office chair and swings and things like that, and I'm always rocking back and forth and from side to side and I'd say those things suggest in many ways I'm undersensitive so I don't know.

I do, but only on some modes of transport. Car yes, if I am not driving (never when I am at the wheel). Coaches, always, to the point that I can't ride in them. Buses not generally (might be as they are not usually moving fast enough), trains no and my motorbike never.

The motorbike would suggest that it's not balance related in my case as you definitely move around more on a bike than other forms of transport.