Sea sickness and liveaboards

[FinnMom]

Doc Vikingo's Sea Sickness Remedies

 

[lowviz]

...//... Do those of you who experience sea sickness battle this as bad or even worse ....

I've tried all the usual remedies and preventions. I had to move up to the big guns. You need a doc to do this for you.

Promethazine (12.5 mg scored tabs) and *real* pseudoephedrine.

Promethazine has the most unusual property of being effective AFTER you've become seasick. However, it will also knock you out. The pseudoephedrine will counter this by keeping you awake. Unfortunately, pseudoephedrine will really raise your blood pressure.

I take a half tab of promethazine before the dive and hope for the best. If not, I take another half tab and a pseudoephedrine.

LOB? Never did one. But if seasick and not planning to dive, I'd just take one promethazine and "Bye Bye"...

@DocVikingo et al: -awaiting the doctors' reads on this...

 

[lowviz]

@DocVikingo: seems like you haven't been around for a while. @Duke Dive Medicine ??

 

[greta-inbaja]

First I have to say, I am so lucky my husband even enjoys diving. He has gotten sick in every body of water we have been in. Even the up and down in the pool while getting certified made him sick. He has tried all the meds available except the combo Iowviz mentions above. Scopalomine works for him. He has to put the patch on the night before. We did a liveaboard in Thailand and he did fine. He does say it gives him dry mouth and makes him tired. He has one strict rule though. I am not allowed to ask him how he's feeling. He says once I ask then he has to think about it. We always keep light snacks handy for him between dives. He also has to limit any alcohol intake in the evenings. Maybe a beer, that's it. He doesn't do well if he has to hang out on the surface and wait for other divers to get it together. I learned something valuable a couple yrs back. I had never been even the slightest bit ill on the water. But on a trip in florida i felt terrible. So the next trip we did I took some bonine. I was super tired after the dive. At depth it took just a little more concentration to keep track of my computer etc. I learned a valuable lesson regarding what my husband goes through to dive. Just something to think about for those of us that dive with people unlucky enough to need seasick meds to enjoy our sport.

 

[KathyV]

First I have to say, I am so lucky my husband even enjoys diving. He has gotten sick in every body of water we have been in. Even the up and down in the pool while getting certified made him sick. He has tried all the meds available except the combo Iowviz mentions above. Scopalomine works for him. He has to put the patch on the night before. We did a liveaboard in Thailand and he did fine. He does say it gives him dry mouth and makes him tired. He has one strict rule though. I am not allowed to ask him how he's feeling. He says once I ask then he has to think about it. We always keep light snacks handy for him between dives. He also has to limit any alcohol intake in the evenings. Maybe a beer, that's it. He doesn't do well if he has to hang out on the surface and wait for other divers to get it together. I learned something valuable a couple yrs back. I had never been even the slightest bit ill on the water. But on a trip in florida i felt terrible. So the next trip we did I took some bonine. I was super tired after the dive. At depth it took just a little more concentration to keep track of my computer etc. I learned a valuable lesson regarding what my husband goes through to dive. Just something to think about for those of us that dive with people unlucky enough to need seasick meds to enjoy our sport.

Thanks for that! People that are not prone to seasickness often don't understand what it is like, or they think that it's funny! But it can really be nasty to experience.

 

[Kevrumbo]

You have to build up and develop your psychosomatic tolerance by learning to "acclimatize" to the unique & dynamic forces/motion environment around you.

There's nothing wrong with quick & easy somatic remedies/medications for sea sickness, but you can break the dependency on them over time with self-hypnosis/visualization only, building up in the process your own "psychosomatic tolerance".

The motivation is to do all means cognitively to help yourself without any over-the-counter or prescription drugs (and the side-effects -especially those mimicking DCS- they can produce).

. . .Motion Sickness is largely the result of a dopamine prediction error: there is a conflict between the type of motion being experienced --for instance, the unfamiliar pitch of a boat-- and the type of motion expected (solid, unmoving ground). The result in this case is nausea and vomiting. But it doesn't take long before the dopamine neurons start to revise their model of motion; this is why seasickness is usually temporary. After a few horrible hours, the dopamine neurons . . .learn to expect the gentle rocking of the high seas.
p.41-42 How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer

You don't acquire this tolerance by dulling your cognitive/kinesthetic senses with excessive dependence on drugs. . . Dynamic Motion and the possible withdrawal syndrome from the medications "dulling your senses" are gonna make it that much harder to build up tolerance. . .

Here's another easy thought and practical exercise to help develop your Cognitive/Kinesthetic Awareness and to understand the basic mechanics of it all:

Stand-up, close your eyes, and have a friend push you at random intervals from any direction around you. Try to steady yourself and resist being knocked over as best you can. After a while, you might start feeling disoriented or even dizzy & nauseous (the start of motion sickness).

Take a break . . .and then try again:

Stand-up, close your eyes, and this time have your friend at a 3 second interval push once from directly in front of you, and then 3 seconds later push you twice coming from your right side. Repeat this set over and over --Anticipate, brace yourself and counter-react to these pushes to keep from being knocked over. You shouldn't be as disoriented as you were before because you're now in control, countering these predictable, periodic and expected forces trying to push you over.

Now apply this to being on the diveboat: you see the swells coming in a regular predictable frequency (every 12 seconds for example) --Anticipate, brace yourself and counter-react to these "pushes" to keep from being knocked over. Now close your eyes and do the same thing. At the very least, with practice (and hopefully easy rhythm swells, and non-heavy, stormy or chaotic seas to start off with!), you should be able hold off the nausea to a tolerable level.

Be patient and don't give up: it takes time, concentration & effort to develop and apply this cognitive/kinesthetic technique to the seemingly complex 3-dimensional forces acting on you at sea and achieve some relief of motion sickness symptoms . . .the gist is to figure out and feel the rhythm of the swells, and "see" & anticipate together your's & the boat's resultant movement. . .

 

[lowviz]

@Kevrumbo

No argument with what you posted, sea-sickness does indeed tolerate out with experience. Any sailor knows that. However, some people are more susceptible than others, and these people may not be exposed often enough to ever get good at it. What do you have for them? Keep trying vacations until they get good at it? You can't do this right off the blocks and you know it.

Your approach is fine for those who are constantly exposed. I guarantee it will work over time and regular exposure. I took a different path. I was well coached along the way, too. One sea captain once told me that I lost my dive at the dock. He was right, too. And that is what you are saying. However, I needed more to keep from losing way too many dives.

The "placebo" effect of a real drug (that actually works AFTER sea sickness presents) is a powerful mental and physical crutch.

Maybe the OP should move this to one of the medical forums so real doctors will respond?

 

[lowlysubaruguy]

Thanks for all the tips. We only have a week so the trips short we may head to Florida and see if we can time it with a very short live aboard I remember there being 3 and 4 day trips from time to time. Shes pretty adapt at dealing with it but it can ruin the diving for her for a couple of days. Five of us went to the Phillipines two years ago and we dove in some nasty weather three of them got sick. She was one of them but two days later she was back in the water with us. So shes a trooper and she does love to dive.

The strick head counting proceedures tend to be the biggest problem they generally require her to be sitting in the worst possible place until there off the dock and out into open waters that combined with how poorly a lot of the dive boat exhausts are its tough. Sitting in an area with poor air movement diesel fumes smokers etc. Hopefully we can figure out a way to get here out to sea without issues here. Ill probably talk with the captains first and see if they might be able to get her in a place where she has better ventilation during boarding and head counts.

 

[billt4sf]

My wife sounds like yours. She has gotten motion sickness from literally turing around too fast in the kitchen! It runs in her family, her sisters and Mom do, too.

She uses the scopolomine patch and has no issues -- except that it CAN come off once in a while. And we have to be careful to use it for 72 hours exactly. Some people do get side effects from these - you might want to try it on land first? Ask a doc. it's a prescription thing.

- Bill

 

[scjoe]

In addition to the patch, you can also get Scopalomine in pill form either through a compounding pharmacy or by just buying Kwells online. Each pill is usually good for about 8 hours. You can develop a certain tolerance to motion sickness, but it can takes days at sea to do so and it doesn't work for everyone.