eli5 why do people get carsick/seasick?
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Your body has a defense mechanism in case your eat poison. The balance center in your ears is very sensitive and being damaged by poison will make you feel off balance as one of the first symptoms of something poisonous. Your eyes indicate that your feeling of movement from your ears isn’t true. This triggers the defense mechanism: you throw up, expelling any poison not digested yet, and hopefully minimizing the damage.
Fast forward a few million years. Humans invent the wheel and eventually other forms of travel…. and something strange happened: it *is* possible to be inside a structure (car, boat, airplane, wagon, etc) that is moving, but inside it looks like you’re not moving. This sets off the defense mechanism at the wrong time. We call this seasickness, getting carsick, etc.
Look out a window. Make your body see – with your eyes – that yes, you are moving and bouncing around and that feeling of motion is legit. It’ll calm you down. But some people just *can’t* read a book in a moving car or whatever.
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