Monday, July 16, 2007

Sea Sickness

We are cruising with a small group on a four day cruise to Cabo San Lucas in December. More than half of the group have never been on a cruise before and the subject of sea sickness has come up. More importantly, the question of how to deal with it came up. There are plenty of prescription, over the counter, and other remedies to choose from, but do they really work? Thankfully the Mythbusters, took on the task of seeing what works. Both the over the counter pharmaceutical drugs and the ginger pills worked. We learned about ginger pills about three years ago, tried it, and have taken ginger pills with us on every cruise we have taken since. In the past we have Dramamine (off the shelf motion sickness med) but with these kind of drugs, they left us drowsy, and shouldn't be taken with alcohol, and that's not going to work on our vacation. I have talked to people that wear the patch onboard, and the consensus was that it works, but some said that if affected their sleep if they didn't remove it before going to bed. I have yet to talk to someone that has used one of the bracelets and said it helped any.

The only drawback of the ginger pills that I know of is that they are a natural blood thinner, so people on medication for blood or heart related issues should talk to their doctor before taking them. Otherwise, we have had no problems with em.

Also, in a pinch we have recommended ginger ale, ginger cookies, or the ginger from the sushi stand on board to people that were feeling queasy with good results.

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