Sea sickness, chair lift

Ok maybe a really dumb question but if you get sea sickness does a chair lift make u sick?
I get sea sick and in Ibiza lasy year thought i would try out Parasailing. When up in the air i started to feel really sick because the seat under the parasail rocks back and forth. When going though the forum i noticed a topic with links to youtube showing people stuck on chair lifts. I noticed that in one of the videos the chair lifts rock like a parasail.
there you go, my question isnt as random as you thought.
may still be a silly question though lol :roll: :lol:

I get sea sick and car sick, but I'm fine in a chair lift as long as no-one rocks it (which you're not supposed to do anyway).

Ally

No. Close the thread.

Tony_H wrote:No. Close the thread.

Actually Tony, when I was in La Rosiere a couple of years ago, one of my ski instructors decided it would be fun to rock the chair lift when I was sitting in it with him and another pupil, and I had to ask him to stop because it was making me feel quite sick (and it was my French ski class but luckily I remembered that it's called 'mal de mer').

Ally

I might have known :roll:

sm4sh wrote:Ok maybe a really dumb question but if you get sea sickness does a chair lift make u sick?
I get sea sick and in Ibiza lasy year thought i would try out Parasailing. When up in the air i started to feel really sick because the seat under the parasail rocks back and forth. When going though the forum i noticed a topic with links to youtube showing people stuck on chair lifts. I noticed that in one of the videos the chair lifts rock like a parasail.
there you go, my question isnt as random as you thought.
may still be a silly question though lol :roll: :lol:

No it's not a silly question although you can be sure of some silly answers :roll:

There's no physiological difference between sea-sickness and motion sickness, so if you suffer from sea-sickness then potentially you can experience the same or similar symptoms on a chair lift. It's pretty common, as many of us know from experience, that people experience problems on chairlifts and cable-cars which they associate with heights. In fact it's really often just a variation of motion sickness which is a problem in their sense of balance and equilibrium or more technically, proprioception and kinesthesia.

Proprioception is an odd sense, partly based on direct physical stimuli, like the way ears know we're level or on a slope, and partly on the way the brain processes that information and it tells us how we're orientated. Kinesthesia is very similar with the main difference that it tells us how we're moving in space.

These are both very different from vertigo which is a specific physiological condition related to the inner ear. People struggling with proprioception and kinesthesia may have some underling condition or the problem may be like an aversion. For example, I had a mild cold recently that affected my sinuses slightly and I could feel my spatial senses altered and I had a couple of attacks of mild nausea as a result.

So if you suffer from sea sickness you might possibly suffer on a ski lift, knowing that you might take some anti-nausea tablets with you. Mostly though people only suffer from motion sicknesses after longer periods and you're on a lift too short a time.

Sm4sh,
I don't think it was a silly question either.

I have also felt slightly sick in a long and fast gondola ride up the mountain, but I put that down to altitude sickness. The next time I went up it I took a bottle of water and a mars bar and I found eating and drinking stopped the nausea, whatever the cause was :D And drinking plenty of water is supposed to help with altitude sickness.

I'm sure Ise is right and people do sometimes feel a bit sick in chair lifts. My instructor didn't seem at all surprised when I explained that the rocking was making me feel sick (in case he didn't understand my very limited French I did a good imitation of someone vomiting over the side of the chairlift). But as soon as he stopped the rocking I felt okay again, which was a very good thing because that chair ride back up from the Italian to the French side of La Rosiere is very long and slow.

Ally

AllyG wrote:Sm4sh,
I don't think it was a silly question either.

I have also felt slightly sick in a long and fast gondola ride up the mountain, but I put that down to altitude sickness. The next time I went up it I took a bottle of water and a mars bar and I found eating and drinking stopped the nausea, whatever the cause was :D And drinking plenty of water is supposed to help with altitude sickness.

Altitude, or altitude sickness, might affect proprioception and kinesthesia but I'm not sure it's going to be significant. You're not going to get the onset of altitude sickness making the ascent that a chairlift does, it's just not high enough or making enough of an ascent.

The top of La Rosiere is only 2600m which isn't much in terms of altitude, it's enough for there to be measurable impact but altitude sickness isn't likely. Most people suffering from altitude sickness in ski stations aren't )

The differential diagnosis for altitude sickness is altitude, that's not facetious it's just the way it is because the symptoms are very similar to a bunch of things people are way more likely to have. Doctors would call that a "Zebra Diagnosis" by which they mean "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras"", in this case, if you're dehydrated think mild dehydration and if your blood sugar is low think low blood sugar. If you've just travelled to a ski station the most likely cause is travel, the journey, interrupted meals and sleep. By the same token if you're at 5000m then it's more likely you have altitude sickness than malaria or swine flu for example.