Car sickness can make family vacations miserable for both the sufferer and the rest of the family. Motion sickness, which includes car sickness, sea sickness and air sickness, affects most people to varying degrees.
Symptoms range from a general feeling of discomfort to nausea and vomiting.
Doctors at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas say the discomfort results from conflicting messages being sent to the brain. The brain relies on messages from the inner ear, the muscles and the eyes to tell it where the body is in space. When any of these systems send different messages, the brain gets confused, and you can get queasy. For example, if you're reading in the car, your inner ear knows you're moving, but your muscles think you're sitting still and your eyes don't see anything moving because they're looking at the page. On an airplane, your inner ear senses the motion, but your eyes only see the cabin, which looks stationary.