Sometimes it is impossible to do anything about your kid's motion sickness problem. It just will simply require medical treatment and that is that (unless you want to resort to some kind of expensive surgery on the inner ear.)
There are quite a few over-the-counter medical treatments for air sickness almost all of which should be taken or used at least a few hours before flying.
Some of these are antihistamines such as meclizine (Bonine, Antivert and Postafen being three very common brands), diphenhydramine (Benadryl or Dimedrol outside the USA and Canada) and belladonna in the form of scopolamine.
Meclizine is a known antiemetic (anti-nausea) and antispasmodic (it prevents muscle spasms) medicine that can be bought over-the-counter in most pharmacies and drugstores. It is believed that meclizine helps to reduce the likely susceptibility to nausea and vomiting by reducing activity in the part of the brain which controls nausea. The main side effect of this drug is drowsiness but dry mouth is also common.
Benadryl is used as an antihistamine, antiemetic, hypnotic and sedative drug. This drug is in fact one of the oldest known antihistamines, having been discovered in 1943, but it is still readily used and prescribed (although it can be bought over the counter) in many countries of the world.
Once again, the most common side-effect of taking diphenhydramine is profound drosiness, sometimes accompanied by ataxia, dry throat and mouth, flushed skin, irregular or rapid heartbeat, blurred vision, short-term memory loss and constipation.
Scopolomine is a drug that has valid medical uses only in extremely tiny doses, as an overdose can cause delusions, deliriums, stupor and death! it is most commonly used in the form of an infused patch that will usually contain as little as 330 µg (micrograms) of the drug. This is affixed to the skin – usually behind the ear – around 3-4 hours before flying so that the drug can be released by the patch to be gradually absorbed through the skin. To tell you the truth I am not wild about giving this drug to kids!
That is why in the next blog I am going to give you some more natural remedies for air sickness and motion sickness that are not going to cause miserable side effects. As suggested, most of the common over-the-counter medical products designed to deal with airsickness do have potentially unpleasant or even dangerous side-effects. Hence, you need to carefully weigh up the possibility of suffering these side effects before deciding whether taking drugs to calm your kid's right for you or not.