Yep... a car is one place you get vibration.  Even worse for me is air travel.  I also avoid things like "vibrating chairs" like the plague.

Heather

Another example that I just experienced was last week in a store.  Three employees walked by pulling heavy dollies behind them which caused the floor to vibrate heavily for about thirty seconds in total.  I don't know how to explain it, but it felt like my system went into crazy overload, and then those crazy mast cells went wild. This also happens to me if a helicopter flies low overhead.  I was si glad to figure out the mast cell/vibration thing, as this had been happening for a while with the vibrations and I thought I was losing my mind

Anything which causes physical stress will cause MC degranulation.  This is well understood.  We never consider vibrations as causing "stress" since we think of that as something minor, but it too is a degranulator.  I've been put into syncope due to being in the car when I've been very sick either from contrast or surgery.  It deminishes as I've gotten stronger.

Now, is this the same as getting car sick?  I somehow don't think so.  There could be an indirect connection, but I don't think that getting car sick - or nausea from being in a car is exactly the same.  Although, if you think about it, Dramamine is used to combat that car sickness and dramamine is an antihistamine, this is why there could be an indirect connection.  Car sickness has been traditionally connected to the inner ear and balance and this is why I don't think that vibration is the issue here.  I think car sickness has been more attributed to the inability of a person to handle being off balance and the eye is a key to the body's feeling balance as well as the inner ear.  Yet, the indirect connection would be that once you are off balance and the sensorial input has been triggered, this stress to the body would then trigger the mast cells since the stress system is also a means of directly degranulating mast cells.  So, in triggering the stress system, then you are going to trigger the mast cells and add more fun to the car sickness with the masto triggering.

Now, I have read that there are studies looking at the mast cell's involvement in tinnitis and inner ear problems and so here is yet another indirect or even direct involvement in car sickness.  And in this sense, if you get some heafty vibration of the air, as with a helicopter beating the air around you, yes, this too would be a trigger.   You may not sense the air vibrating as with a breeze, but it is there and the very tiny bones of your inner ear could most definitely perceive them and then start off the triggering, why not?!

But the real issue here is WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT IT?

MEDICATE!

I have pre-medicated for flying and for long trips and it does help!!  And when I am on a trip and I find I begin triggering, I up my doses to compensate for the higher triggering!

This is how we have to get around it.  I would even consider, if you find that noises are a major issue, walking around with a pack of ear plugs in order to help protect your inner ear from some of those vibrations.   It's like wearing dark glasses to help keep the eyes from being so sensitive to the strong sun and colors - these too can be too much at times and they help to dampen some of the impact.

I hope this helps!

Lisa

Tallbird, when I have to go to Sao Paulo, which is a 5 hour drive, I have to pre-medicate for it.  Yet, when I go to Rio, which is in the other direction and a 2 hour drive, I do not.  The stress of the highway, both physical as well as emotional, is a lot for our bodies to handle.  When you add all of the additional stress - visual and auditory, this too adds to the stress.   Have you ever noticed that some adverstisements or films where they are constantly changing the angle of the camera or bombarding you with constantly changing images begins to irritate you?  On the road, your eyes are in constant motion and the input to your neurological system is constant and this only adds to the burden of things that your body must receive.  This is why it's often best to put on some kind of very soothing music, lay back in the seat with a nice pillow and fade out for the duration of the trip, resting the entire time if you can.  It keeps down the degranulation.

And since you already have issues with carsickness, Without a doubt you are needing Dramamine, probably a double dose, but that may make you too zonked out so I would think one Dramamine and then an allegra 180mg would be good for a start and then add as you go along if you're not feeling well.

I hope this helps!

Lisa

I was diagnosed 7 years ago with severe motion intolerance (who knew that was a diagnosis?).  The ENT confidently told me that usually people with my severity of symptoms had a concussion as a toddler (which I did), and that it would get progressively worse as I got older unless
I went to specialized physiotherapy.  So off I went, and the so-called "specialist" said my best bet was desensitization...she had a disco-kind of light going around in circles around a dark room, and had me bouncing on an exercise all while following a laser pointer on the wall going in the opposite direction of the disco light.  Oh my.  I was repeatedly reassured that this would eventually acclimatize my body to movement, and after about two months of being violently ill for DAYS after each "treatment" (torture?), I refused to go back. Sigh.  The things we do in the hopes of getting better .

I definitely find that highway driving is hard, especially when it's not a divided highway.  The movement from the oncoming cars so close to ours makes my system freak out, but it's difficult when most of the meds knock me out cold....not always a good thing when we're only on a 30-minute drive.

Oh should add one of my very first symptoms for my "whole system crash" was tinnitus and it has stayed with me the majority of the time to varying degrees.