The appearance of dizziness or vertigo during or at the end of a trip is a common phenomenon. So common that almost everyone can report an incident of someone in their environment with such sensitivity.
But is it the voyage itself by any means of transport that causes the dizziness or is it that just some means of transport that are responsible? Both may be true. There are people that feel dizzy only on a boat or only in the car and others who get dizzy on any means of transport.
To help those suffering, we need to know the mechanisms that trigger these symptoms.
There are two categories of causes:
- Those that disrupt the function of the vestibular system, while it operates normally.
- Those that burden the already disturbed vestibular system, while it is underfunctioning, that is operating below the limits of the subjective feeling of imbalance.
The first case includes patients who are easily affected by motion sickness. By this we refer to a group of symptoms that occur after excessive irritation of a receptor of the labyrinth (semicircular canals, otolithic system) due to multiple accelerations in different directions (Coriolis effect) or simultaneous stimulation of two or more receptors whose information (nerve impulses) arriving at the vestibular nuclei are contradictory (e.g. linear acceleration in the horizontal axis in combination with a rotating acceleration in the vertical axis).
Symptoms that may occur in motion sickness are: paleness, yawning, nausea, a sense of weight in the stomach, tachycardia, cold sweat, dizziness, vertigo, malaise, vomiting.
We have to stress that patients who easily develop motion sickness are also suspected of having a latent fear because they believe that travel can be a dangerous condition for their health or even lead them to death. Strong phobia leads to anxiety and symptoms from the vegetative nervous system, including dizziness, as we mentioned earlier.
In these cases, patients avoid e.g. airplane or if they travel by airplane they get dizzy overwhelmed, while on the contrary if they travel by the train or by bus they do not get dizzy because they feel safer.
The latter case concerns patients suffering from temporary or permanent underfunctioning of the vestibular system (case of incomplete central compensation), without that being known or perceived in normal daily activities. However, because modern lifestyles for most people of productive age are associated with intense anxiety and fatigue and alternating rest and relaxation, this, coupled with barometric low atmospheres, creates hemodynamic changes in the spinal cord arterial system that can lead to functional deregulation of the vestibular nuclei.
In children, motion sickness is facilitated on the one hand by the incomplete development of the vestibule and, on the other hand, due to reduced adaptation and limited addiction. Thus, in the childhood, the vestibular system requires about 10 years until it is fully completed and coordinated right and left, but mainly with the supra-nuclear neurons (oculomotor, network formation, cerebellar, neurovegetal, vestibular cortex, vestibulospinal).
At the same time, the addiction / adaptation mechanism is delayed, as we have seen, with the exception of children from their early years are in constant motion, climbing on trees, playing all day (e.g. gypsy children, children training in dancing or acrobats etc.).
Due to the above, when children are exposed to obvious kinetic stimuli (e.g. accelerations, decelerations - road turns etc.), which for the developed (normal) vestibular system are not aggravating, they constitute transcendental stimuli and lead to dizziness, nausea, sweating etc. Thus, when children sit in the back seat of the car while the car is running (vestibular stimulus) either because they see the interior of the car as immobile or because they read (visual irritation) that creates a dissonance of the neural motions coming to the vestibular nuclei and mobility is facilitated.
In adults, where the vestibular system has been fully developed, there are cases where a factor has caused unilateral damage, which has never been counteracted. Those people that cause transient irritation to vestibular receptors (frequent steep rotation, storm at sea) are easily stunned, especially when there is no possibility of staring at a target while the person is in motion (such as when in a closed cabin of a ship without window).
Naturally, there may also be patients who report stunted travel during the last months or years. Here, we have to think of some recent vestibular condition (recurrent haemodynamic euthanasia, incomplete counteraction after vestibular neuropathy, incipient auditory neuron, etc.).
The conditions in a voyage may additionally be affected by a person who is already suffering from a vestibular disorder (hypodermic - urethral) due to sudden changes in height (eg in the airplane), sudden changes in atmospheric pressure (e.g. small airplanes not equipped with a system for automatic adjustment of atmospheric pressure changes) and sudden fluctuations / alternations of ambient lighting (bright light, backlighting, bright alternating field shifts).
The intensity of the symptoms that will appear on the journey is related to the type of vestibular disorder the patient has, the type of the vehicle (ship, airplane, etc.) and the environmental conditions of the journey (many steep road speed, sea shore, etc.). However, the activities of the person who preceded the trip or those that are scheduled to take place after the end of the journey are of great importance. Thus, if e.g. a trip is professional (eg closing an agreement, speaking at a foreign university, etc.) creates conditions of insecurity and uncertainty in case of failure. This leads to anxiety and phobia.
