Why do I feel sick before a trip even starts?

A learned response, not a weak one

Nausea is one of the body's fastest lessons, for good evolutionary reasons: if something made you sick once, remembering it is useful. After a few bad trips, the brain pairs the cues of travel, the packed bag, the smell of the car, the airport announcements, with being ill, and starts the response early. The same mechanism is well described in people who feel sick on the way to a chemotherapy appointment, before any treatment is given. It is learning, and learning can be unlearned.

Anxiety adds to it. Fear slows digestion and increases stomach acid, which is nausea without any motion involved. A traveller dreading a flight can arrive at the gate already queasy.

Why it often fades once you are moving

People describe vomiting before a flight and feeling fine once airborne, or dreading a drive for days and enjoying it once on the road. Once the trip starts, the uncertainty ends: you can see the road, feel the actual motion, and act. The plan takes over from the dread. That is also why having a plan matters so much in the hours before: it brings forward the moment when you are doing something rather than waiting.

The morning-of plan

Eat something small and plain even if you do not feel like it; an empty stomach is worse. Drink water, not coffee. Get your seat sorted and your bag packed the night before so the morning has nothing to decide. Ten to thirty minutes before the motion starts, put your headphones on, run Prepare Me if you use Dizzout, and do three to five minutes of slow breathing with a long exhale. Then look at something far away.

If the nausea is bad before any trip, including ones you are not worried about, or it comes with other symptoms, see a doctor. If the fear of being sick is the thing running your life, the emetophobia page is the place to start, and so is a conversation with a doctor or therapist.

Questions people ask