So we know motion sickness is caused by a mismatch between the sensory information received from the inner ear, eyes, and other body parts. Why does our body respond to such a discrepancy with emptying our stomach, and why do we actually feel better after vomiting even if we get on the same vehicle again?
In: Biology
The effects of motion sickness are very close to that of poisoning, and are indeed triggered by the same thing, discrepancy between what we feel and what we see.
Throughout our evolution we evolved to throw up when our bodies detect being poisoned, to expel whatever had poisoned us. But our bodies don’t know if we’ve been poisoned by detecting specific chemicals, but rather through our senses.
On a side note, alcohol is a poison. If you’ve ever gotten drunk enough to vomit you might notice that the effects are similar to motion sickness but multiple times worse.
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