Motion Sickness? Acupressure, Ginger, & Clove

It’s almost time to fly home. I don’t travel far enough get jet lag like ybonesy. But I do suffer from bothersome motion sickness. I’ve had it since I was a little girl, and found out about it when we would do winding family trips from the Pine Barrens of Georgia to the Great Smokies of Tennessee. I learned to keep my eyes on the horizon, and never to read or look at maps while in motion. Fresh air helps, too, along with sitting in the front of the vehicle or resting your head against a seat back.

These days I’m more likely to be in the driver’s seat (even though I have a terrible sense of direction) and most times I am flying cross country to visit family or friends. This morning I drove the 212 miles round trip to Philadelphia with my brother for his transplant check-in. (Frankenbelly 3 has zipped his recovery into the fast lane! November 18th marks 1 month.) Saturday we shared family stories and celebrated early Thanksgiving with relatives who have driven the 10 hours from South Carolina to Pennsylvania more than six times this year to be closer to family.

Travel is a gift. Travel can wear you out. And make you a little dizzy. When I arrived in Pennsylvania last week, the day before my mother’s birthday, she handed me a book on home remedies and pointed to the section on motion sickness. “See if this helps,” she said. The ingredients are pure and simple: pack the ginger, chew on some cloves.

According to Readers Digest Kitchen Cabinet Cures — 1,001 Homemade Remedies For Your Health, the same chemical compounds that give ginger its zing—gingerol and shogaol—reduce intestinal contractions, neutralize digestive acids, and quell activity in the brain’s “vomiting center.” If you eat 1/2 teaspoon of chopped, fresh ginger every 15 minutes for one hour before traveling, mix a pinch of powdered ginger in water, drink ginger tea, or nibble pieces of candied ginger, you should be good to go.

Grinding cloves between the teeth also helps. But if you’re looking for non-food related remedies, try Sea-Bands, knitted elastic wrist bands which operate by applying pressure on the Nei Kuan (P6) acupressure point on each wrist by means of a plastic stud. Liz introduced me to them a few years ago and I swear by them for both car and planes. Here’s a wrap up of other practical suggestions for motion sickness in the Readers Digest book:

On Planes:

• Eat low-cal snacks & light meals 24 hours before departure
• Choose a seat in the front of the plane or by the wing
• Direct the air vent above the seat toward your face

In Cars:

• Sit in the front seat
• Keep your eyes on the horizon
• Don’t read or look at maps
• Keep your head still by resting it against the seat back
• Turn air vents toward your face

On Boats:

• Ask for cabin on the upper deck or near front of the ship
• When on deck, keep eyes firmly fixed on horizon or land

If the cloves and ginger don’t work, one last home remedy listed for motion sickness is warm lemon-aid. Squeeze one whole lemon into a cup sweetened with a teaspoon of honey. Keep the drink in a warm thermos while traveling. And I’d add the Sea-Bands to every category. The acupressure works!

-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, November 16th, 2010 — all photos © 2010 by QuoinMonkey — with thanks to my family who have made this week in motion a joy and a pleasure

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Goodbye Corrales, Hello Vietnam

It’s that time again. The harvest is winding down. Jim bought a small basket of red and green chile so we can roast, peel, and freeze a few baggies to pull out in the middle of winter, when our bodies crave the chemical capsaicin (which produces the heat in chile). The air conditioner is closed up, and the heater turned on.

But it’s also time for one of my frequent journeys to Vietnam. I’ve stopped counting how many this makes — surely I’ve used up the fingers on both hands and am now onto my toes. I can tell you that each time I prepare for another trip, I go through the same bizarre process of mental gyrations.








Roma’s Five Stages of Travel Preparation


Stage One: Avoidance. As soon as I know I have to go on a long trip abroad, I put it out of my mind. After all, the trip is weeks, maybe months away. I sometimes neglect to tell even my family; I don’t want them to fret any earlier than necessary. Although I’ve gotten better about this, it would not have been unusual a few years back to hear the following conversation in my household:

ME: Hey, Jim, I did tell you that I’m leaving on Monday to (fill-in-the-blank-country)?

JIM: What?? No, I had no idea.

ME: Oh, I’m sorry. It was spur-of-the-moment.

JIM: You mean, they only gave you four days’ notice?

Stage Two: Nostalgia. I walk around my house, the patio, my yard, the girls’ rooms with a sweeping sense of loss and dread. How can I leave all this? I don’t want to go. Don’t make me go!!




Corrales Growers Market with the iPhone, all photos © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.




Stage Three: Guilt. Surely my children will be damaged by all my globe-trotting. Don’t people ask me every time I tell them I’m off again, “What about the girls?” I rush around like a crazy woman, trying to make my absence more bearable. I take Em’s Halloween outfit to the seamstress so it will be ready by the time I return. I hang up Dee’s clothes in her closet so she could find them easily while getting ready for school. Jim gets a homemade apple pie–his favorite. So this is what inspired Superwoman, I think.



Stage Four: Panic. This is the frenzied state I find myself in the day before I leave, my suitcase still not packed. I am relieved to find that my multientry visa is still valid. Whew! It would have been disastrous had it expired. (Been there, done that.) At 8 pm, the hour I should be hitting the sack given that I have to wake up at 3:45 am, I start flinging clothes into my suitcase. It’s cool in Hanoi, hot in the south. Whatever I forget to pack, I’ll just have to buy there. Hmmm, was that a goosebump I just felt?









Stage Five: Calm. Bags are checked, boarding passes in hand. I got an upgrade on the leg from ABQ to SFO. Wandering through airport stores, it dawns on me that I forgot to pack my neck pillow. Pick up a super soft one to add to our collection back home. Also picked up two books I’ve been wanting to read: lit by Mary Karr and Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves. Between the books, my writing and doodle journals, plus a presentation and a bit of writing for work, I will make good use of my alone time. I’m ready for this. Let the fun begin!









A Sampling of (Recent) Vietnam Posts

• Vietnam As Destination, Vietnam As Muse
• The Mekong Delta Through A New Set Of Eyes
• Children In Vietnam
• On Being A Mother Who Travels (Or A Traveling Mother)
• Local Color — My Favorite Shots From Ha Long Bay
• Vietnam — On The Road To Change
• Vietnamese Painter Pham Luc & The Gift Of Happiness
• Burro On An Airplane

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Reason #1 To Be A Cool Cat While Traveling: The 16-Hour Flight

Cool Cat, pen and ink on graph paper, doodle © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.



There are a lot of reasons I’ll be keeping my cool over the coming days, but the one that tops my list is that by the time you read this, I will either have completed or be on my way to completing a 16-plus-hour flight (one stop for fueling, after about 13 hours, I believe). Egads. That’s enough to make anyone lose their cool.

But not me. I’m a road warrior of past, not to mention panic attack pills. Here are the cool-cat techniques you can be sure I will be exercising during that walk in the park:

• Pull inward. Conserve energy, stuff earphones in my ears, and don’t talk much to people around me. A while back I flew about 13 hours in business class next to one really cool cat—the kind whose touch pad computer never died—without once saying Hello. Can you believe it? He was so cool he actually pissed me off. That and his full head of wavy hair and the fact he was ten years younger than me.
• Become self-sufficient. Have everything I need at my fingertips, including aspirin, extra clothing, toothbrush, latest memoir I’m reading, all my writing and drawing stuff. Everything.
• Be stealth. Don’t stand out. I don’t want to become a target for anyone.
• Act like I know what the hell I’m doing. Goes with not becoming a target. Walk with confidence, especially on the streets.
• Be comfortable. Dress in loose clothing, easy shoes, layers for when it gets overly hot or cool.
• Stay cool-headed. I once unwittingly picked the movie The Ring to watch after lights out. Very well-done movie, all was going along beautifully until suddenly I found that my heart was racing and my palms sweaty. Looked to my left: man sitting next to me was fast asleep. To my right was complete stillness, everyone alseep. I forgot that I never watch horror movies by myself, much less while trapped in a plane hurdling through complete darkness somewhere over the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately, I managed to breathe through it.

I’ll be off-line for a while, but knowing me, it won’t be too long. In the mean time, if you have any tips for keeping sane on those long flights (if Heather’s reading this, well, em, hyperventilating is not a good tip) please drop them here. I might need them for the way back.

Oh, and if you happen to see a slinky, sleek, smooth chick prowling the streets of Vietnam, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t approach her and ask, Are you ybonesy?

Ta-ta for now.

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