How hot can we get?

Following up on yesterday’s article “How cold can we get?”, I started looking into the opposite. From what I discovered yesterday, the human body is pretty remarkable at retaining it’s internal body temperature. Once it get’s too cold, it begins systematically killing off your extremities for the greater good of your major organs.

So what happens when we get too hot?

From some basic knowledge, it seems that ‘getting too hot’ isn’t something we really have to worry about too much, considering the body hovers around 98.6°F. Using that number for a point of reference, we can look at the two extreme air temperatures on Earth.  The hottest temperature ever recorded was 136°F in Africa in 1922, and the lowest was -128°F in Antarctica. Comparing those two numbers to our internal body temperature, it’s pretty clear that we do pretty well when it comes to the cold, but how about warmth?

The hottest temperature is only about 38°F warmer than our insides, compared to the difference of nearly 226°F with the coldest temperature. That’s a huge jump. So if we can survive temperatures so far below our internal temperatures (albeit barely and only with the right gear), how hot can we survive in?

As we learned yesterday, if you’re naked, your flesh begins to freeze at -18°F in less than 15 minutes. Since theoretically clothing can be created to help us survive in any climate (think astronauts), we’ll assume you’re naked for the heat question as well.

Since we were just talking about freezing, my first thought went to the opposite: boiling. After some research, I came across this site that breaks down all of the chemical components of blood and the effects on it’s boiling point. Turns out it’s exactly the same as water: 212°F. Assuming we were able to survive to the point that our blood started to boil, I’d assume that’d be a more painful death than freezing.

Luckily (I guess that’s the right word to use here), we would die long before our blood reached the boiling point. Our body is much more susceptible to heat than it is cold. While we can survive massive dips in our internal body temperature (a girl in Sweden survived an internal temperature of just 55°F, the lowest hypothermia ever survived), we can only survive up to 105°F. This is common knowledge when it comes to fevers, but the same applies to heat – known as a heat stroke. At this point, our body starts to experience severe damage to many of it’s components. So how hot does it have to be outside for our body’s core temperature to get to that point?

Unfortunately, science is never as black and white as we’d hope, but scientist say a rise in about 21 degrees would make 50% of our planet uninhabitable. Though theoretically, anything above 105°F could raise our temperature to deadly levels. At 129°F, we’d overheat even if we were naked and in the shade.

So let’s go back to that “hottest temperature ever recorded” of 136°F. If you were in that temperature, you’d begin suffering from hyperthermia almost immediately as your body dries out – literally. Due to the high temperature, you’d use up all of your excess water trying to keep cool and begin to develop dehydration. Heat stroke can take less than 15 minutes to kill you in temperatures that warm.

So there you have it.

-18°F, we freeze in 15 minutes.

105°F+, we overheat in 15 minutes.

Luckily our body’s internal air conditioning works wonders, and humans are very capable of surviving extremely hot temperatures – as long as they get plenty of water.

How cold can we get?

At the time of writing this article, most of the United States is in a deep freeze. Known as the ‘polar vortex’, strong winds circle the North Pole, holding the cold temperatures in place at the top of the world. Sometimes, albeit rarely, this vortex can shift shapes and engulf more of the world in these frigid winds.

Recently, temperatures have been subzero in many states and Canada, with windchills down to as low as -51 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes me wonder…just how cold can we get before we start to see major problems?

Obviously, if the wind chill is in the negatives, you don’t want to go outside in the first place. But if you have to, you’ll most likely be okay. For a while.

Let’s start off with some basic facts. Humans, for all intents and purposes, are tropical creatures. Without the modern world to give us layers of clothing or fat, we’d be skinny, naked, and hairless. In any environment besides warm sunshine, this wouldn’t go so well. Thanks to the invention of clothing, we are able to endure much more variety of weather and expand ourselves across the globe.

As our body’s internal temperature is kept at around 98.6°F, any difference to that causes us issues. Anything above 99°F causes us to go into a fever, and anything below 95°F causes hypothermia. This temperature is easily affected by outside forces – wind being the main component.

A well clothed person could bear temperatures around zero for quite some time. But if you add wind into the mix, the temperature plummets exponentially. As the wind picks up, so does it’s ability to permeate your clothing and reach your skin.

Assuming you have any bare flesh exposed, it will freeze within 15 minutes when the temperature hits -18°F. If you have a coat on, you’ll be better off, but the danger starts the moment the wind hits your skin. The lower the temperature, the quicker this process happens.

As we freeze, our body goes into extreme survival mode. Think of it like a country – the capital city houses everything needed for basic functioning, while the rest of the cities and towns are expendable. That’s how your body feels about your torso. Keeping your internal organs warm becomes the body’s first priority as it starts diverting blood flow from your arms and legs. This leads to frost bite as body parts start dying off from lack of warmth.

The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was -129°F at the VOSTOK station in Antarctica in 1983. At that temperature, it doesn’t matter how much clothing you have on, you’re in a dangerous situation. Luckily, not many people, aside from some Russian scientists, will ever experience the bone chilling temperatures of VOSTOK.

So let’s just hope the polar vortex doesn’t get any worse.

Arachnophobia

Hmm, do you feel that? A tingly feeling on the back of your neck. It almost tickles with how subtle it is. Something is definitely there – crawling up you skin. You brush your hand across your neck in an effort to knock whatever it is off. Best case scenario, it’s just formication – the tactile hallucination on your skin, or the ‘skin crawling’ sensation. Phew. Worst case scenario is a spider. Now you’re panicking and over come with a strong sensation of fear and the urge to kill it.

But why?

Why do spiders invoke such a violent reaction of fear? Why is that nearly everyone has this same fear? It’s not like the fear of the dark, or the fear of heights – which only a handful of people experience. If you think about it, nearly everyone you know is probably scared of spiders. That’s…odd. What causes such a uniform fear of the tiny creatures?

Well, first off, it’s not as wide-spread of a phobia as you’d think. The fear of spiders is centralized to Europe and North America, where as most other cultures do not fear spiders at all. Other cultures think of spiders in all kinds of ways – from symbols of wisdom or good luck, to a delicious snack. But regardless, arachnophobia is still the number one phobia in the world, affecting nearly 10% of all adults. So why is that we are so afraid of them, but not other insects? Spiders tend to mind their own business and leave us alone – so why do we feel like they want to murder our children in front of our eyes before slowly and painfully killing us?

Some researchers believe the fear stems from an ancient survival technique of avoiding venomous animals – such as scorpions, snakes, spiders.  That would explain why we don’t like them crawling on us, but why is it that some people think they are cute while others can barely look at a picture of a spider without passing out?

Many researchers believe that arachnophobia is more of a social fear – something that we learned. Fear is extremely contagious. Think of terrorists, ghost stories, or bad neighborhoods. If someone is terrified of something, other people become afraid as well – even if they have no personal reason to. So the same as with spiders. As children conquer their many fears in life by watching their parents be brave, imagine how they must feel when they see a tiny eight legged creature bring their father to tears. And therefore, we are most likely scared of spiders simply because others around us are.

So, to summarize – arachnophobia is pretty much pointless. The tiny creature is everywhere, so the fact that we are so terrified of them doesn’t make much sense. They can leave a nasty bite, but that instance is so rare that we have nothing to worry about really. So is there a way to fix it?

Treating arachnophobia actually has a high success rate. For many, the best method is simply exposure. It’s been proven through brain scans that people who have suffered from an extreme, life-long case of arachnophobia can be cured in as little as two hours. From being petrified to holding a tarantula and thinking it’s cute in two hours? How does that work?

Most therapy sessions take as little as two or three hours and consist of an extreme burst of knowledge about spiders. Sufferers are taught various aspects about the creatures before eventually being taught how to approach and handle them personally. Since the process could not work and the reactions may prove dangerous to the patient, the doctor, and the spider, virtual reality has recently been specialized for curing phobias. So if you’re afraid of spiders, why not just go pick one up and see what happens?

Or maybe you shouldn’t. I don’t want to be held liable for the possibility of a bad experience.

Breast Milk

There’s a chance you read the title of this article and thought that maybe it was about breast milk versus baby formula.

Wrong.

Here’s the real point of this article: When a human gets pregnant, she begins producing breast milk that is specially formulated for her baby human to drink. Cows are the same way. They produce milk specially formulated for baby cows. So, the question that seems to bother no one else but me – why do we drink the cow’s milk, not human milk? Why can’t we go into a grocery store and buy a jug of human milk?

You’re probably thinking something along the lines of “that’s obvious!” or “gross, why would we drink human milk?” I would counter that with “why not?” Why is it more socially acceptable to drink cow milk, but not our own? Even if it’s specially made for human consumption? First, let’s delve into our normal milk drinking habits.

Milk is widely consumed in America as a common drink. Many use it as ingredients, with cereal, before bed, with breakfast, for babies, etc. It’s drank by nearly all ages – and by the gallons. The average American citizen drinks around 20 gallons of milk a year (compared to 28 gallons of water a year and 44 gallons of soda a year). That’s a lot. Drinking milk is not a global thing and varies country to country.  In the US, most of this milk comes from dairy cows on dairy farms. In order to provide the most meat and milk, these cows are fed all sorts of stuff that’s not good for them – or us.

Cow milk contains a lot of artificial hormones, antibiotics, and even pesticide. Unintentional pesticide poisoning kills around 355,000 people a year – something that can usually only happen from the stuff they consume from livestock or vegetables. So with these risks, why do we drink cow milk? It’s good for your bones and health! Right?

..right?

Nope. According to the USDA, there is no evidence that cow milk has any positive effect on human bones. In fact, it’s nothing more than a very effective marketing campaign. In fact, countries that drink less milk tend to have stronger bones. The list of negative health effects of milk goes on and on. So why do we drink cow milk? How has an industry based almost entirely on false advertising become such a staple in American life?

Drinking milk from cows became a thing around 4,000 or 5,000 BC in an area around central Europe. It took quite a while for humans to be able to digest it properly – almost 2000 years. Many scientist believe they started drinking milk as a substitute for Vitamin D that they weren’t able to get in parts of Northern Europe.  That makes sense.

So, back to my original question – why cow milk, and not human milk? Why is drinking human milk such a taboo? Parts of China have recently started drinking human milk as a new health craze. Wealthy Chinese are paying large amounts to get breast milk from donors. So much so that an actual human breast milk bank opened up just a few months ago in Guangzhou. There aren’t many studies on breast milk – because for some reason no one seems to even think about it – but the studies that do exist prove that breast milk is actually a very, very healthy alternative to cow milk.

Human breast milk is specially formulated to prevent illness, promote healthy growth – and possibly even cure cancer. Many studies have shown that cow milk can actually cause cancer, but human milk may cure it. So why don’t we drink it? Besides the ‘human body fluid factor’, the main concern is disease. Most scientist – and regular people – are nervous of the source of the milk. Is it a healthy woman from a first world country, or a disease riddled woman from some poor area? China is attempting to solve that with their donor program that scans for disease, but it’s probably too far off for America to ever get that far. For now, everyone is simply too grossed out by it.

Besides drinking it, think of the other options. A restaurant in London made ice cream out of it, and the new flavor sold out immediately. Another restaurant in New York City even served various types of cheese – all made with the milk of the chef’s wife. Are those two examples a hint of things to come? Maybe, maybe not.

Addicted to Cute

Most of us are familiar with the strange urge we get when we’re around cute animals or babies to ‘squeeze’ them, or “eat them up”. Something about how cuddly they look actually makes us…aggressive. But why is that? First, let’s talk about what makes something cute in the first place.

Cute was a slang word developed in the 1800‘s to describe girls as being smart and intelligent since cute is actually derived from the word ‘acute’, which means having good perception or insight. Over time, this went on to describe clothing as being ‘cute’, meaning that they are well dressed, and eventually the slang term shifted entirely into aesthetics. Around the 1920’s, it became used mostly for babies, kittens, and pretty girls. According to Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz, cuteness is actually caused almost entirely when things remind us of human babies.

Lorenz, who actually worked as a psychiatrist for the Nazi’s and won a Nobel Prize, studied the genes and psychology of different species and races. He came to the conclusion that ‘cuteness’ actually has specific characteristics. Normally, for something to be cute, it is short, round, soft, and just a little disproportionate – like a human baby. This effect, no matter what the species or object, causes our instinctual parenting habits to kick in where we feel that we must protect it and hold it close to us. But sometimes that can get a little carried away. And sometimes, if something is too cute, we can’t even handle it. A strange urge to squeeze it really tightly, or even cause physical harm, may kick in. That’s where things get tricky.

Cuteness actually triggers the same part of our mind as cocaine and meth. Seeing something cute can release a bunch of serotonin in our minds, and too much of this can cause addiction – and withdrawal – symptoms. Much like cocaine, the more addicted we are, the more aggressive we get. Mix this with our instinctual urge to protect something, and our brains get confused. If you have your own child, you don’t feel the same aggression towards it as you would towards someone else’s, or maybe even a small puppy. The reason for this is because you get severely frustrated when you realize that you can’t protect it and you suddenly just want to put as much energy into trying as you can – which makes you want to squeeze it, oddly.

It’s rather strange, but it makes sense. “Gigil” is a Filipino word that means “so cute you have to pinch the cheeks”. Unfortunately, we don’t have a similar word in English, but the effect is still there. Some other theories say that it might be your body’s natural reaction to reverse the over abundance of serotonin. Take the video of Kristen Bell reacting to a sloth, for instance. She gets so happy that suddenly she starts crying and getting really upset. Your body can tell that there is an overflow of specific hormones, so it starts releasing the opposite hormones to counteract each other – which creates a very strange feeling.

So next time you see something with overly large eyes and soft round cheeks, remember that it’s normal to suddenly want to snuff the life out of it. You simply want to protect it so much, that suddenly your body is trying to make you do the opposite as a sort of control mechanism.

Friday the 13th

What do Japanese hotels, Norse mythology, auto accidents, and Jesus all have in common? Today!

That’s right, today is Friday the 13^th (well, today as in the day I’m writing this. I have no idea what day you’re reading this. That’s your business.) Friday the 13^th is largely regarded as a ‘bad luck’ day, but why? The answer is actually a bit more complex than you might imagine. No specific event happened to make people feel that way, but instead it’s a combination of many superstitions.

Henry Sutherland Edwards, while writing a biography for Gioachino Rossini, explained it pretty accurately. Rossini died on Friday the 13^th, and Edwards poked fun at how it’s ironic that he died on a day where two of history’s biggest fears combine. What are those fears? Friday and the number thirteen.

Friday is largely considered unlucky to do anything new. Many feel it is bad luck to start a new project on a Friday. Start it on Thursday or wait until Monday. Why is that though? This goes back to maritime superstitions. If you know anything about sailors and pirates, you’ll know they had a lot of superstition. Many believed it was very unlucky to start a new voyage at sea on a Friday. If you did, you were extremely more likely to face severe weather, pirates, or just general misfortune.

Not many people consider Friday to be a bad day anymore. In fact, it’s one of the few things people look forward to during the work week.  But that leaves thirteen. It is widely known that thirteen is a symbol of bad luck, and that’s where things get tricky. There are actually a ton of answers to that question, so let’s cover a few of them quickly.

A common reason is because of the ‘wholeness’ of 12. There are twelve months in a year, twelve hours on a clock, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve Zodiac signs, twelve apostles of Jesus, etc. So when you throw thirteen into the mix, things get messy. For example, according to the Bible, there were twelve apostles at the table with Jesus during the last supper. The thirteenth guest, Judas, is the man who betrayed him.

In a very similar story in Norse Mythology, the twelve gods were all having dinner when suddenly a thirteenth god enters. Uninvited, unliked, and unhappy, the thirteenth guest was the mischievous Loki, known as the god who is always causing trouble. Loki enters the group and executes  his plan to murder the god Baldr, son of Odin and Frigg. Frigg just happens to be the goddess that the word “Friday” is named after. See where I’m going with this?

After Baldr’s death, Frigg was devastated. It is said that Friday went dark and the entire Earth mourned. The 13^th god killed Friday’s son. Making a bit more sense now, eh?

Mythology and history aside, Friday the 13^th is believed to be one of the widest spread superstitions. It’s estimated that almost 21 million people in the United States alone suffer from friggatriskaidekaphobia (fear of Friday the 13^th) and fear this day more than any other date of the year. Because of this, people tend to be more cautious than usual, resulting in a loss of almost $800 million on that day in business revenue. Ironically, because people are more cautious than usual, it is actually considered the safest Friday with significantly less traffic accidents and hospital patients than a normal Friday.

So there you go. Now it is really difficult to find a hotel with a floor number thirteen. Thanks a lot, Loki.

Deer and Power Outages

Oh boy, I don’t even know how to start this one. Prepare yourself for a roller coaster of stories and locations.

Let’s start on November 16^th, 1966 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Police officers were called to some abandoned buildings to investigate claims from some panicked workers of a strange encounter they had a few hours before.  According to the men, who claimed to be ‘hard to scare’, they were terrified when they encountered a strange man in the darkness near a power plant. Normally they would’ve asked him what he was doing out so late, but this was no ordinary man.

His eyes were glowing bright red. The ‘man’ started walking towards them, clumsily stumbling as if he barely knew how to walk. Maybe he was just a drunk man playing some sort of trick? Nope. He could fly. Fast. According to the men, the creature, while bad on foot, could fly at unbelievable speeds. He hovered above the car of the men as they frantically made their way back to town to find a sheriff. This was just one of many strange encounters with the so called ‘mothman’ that terrorized Point Pleasant for nearly a year.

Other reports of the Mothman described the creature as nothing people had ever seen before. Strange, monster-like, and apparently able to fly at about 100 miles per hour, this odd creature was spotted doing all kinds of weird things. People claimed to have been followed by it while in their cars, seen it looking in their windows at night, picking up dogs, sheep, etc. There was even one report of a sheep being tossed onto a power line.

Okay, let’s stop there. Most of this stuff could be faked or blamed on delusions caused by mass panic and fear. But how could the animal be carried and dropped on a power line? That’d be one heck of a hoax. Or maybe it wasn’t a mythical creature that tossed the sheep at all – because it has happened several times since.

In North Dakota a few years ago, there were claims that their electricity kept flickering on and off, and according to the phone call, it was because of the “deer on the power line.” Well…that’s not normal. Further investigations into this and the image to go along with it provide mixed results, meaning that case may be a hoax as well. Some reports are that it was caused by a train hitting the deer and knocking it into the air. Others say it’s simply Photoshop. But not all of them are so questionable.

In Alaska, an Elk was found hanging from a power line over fifty feet in the air. Yes, an ELK was FIFTY FEET in the air. Now how does that happen? The main theory for how this happened is that the elk got his antlers tangled in the wires while they were on the ground. Then, when the construction crew began hoisting the wires up, he was lifted into the air as well. So that explains that one. But what about Point Pleasant?

Moving on to Montana (I told you we’d be going all over the place), a small deer carcass was found on the power lines. He had knocked out the power of nearby residences, and there had been a witness! Finally, some rock hard evidence as to how the deer got up there. So what was it?!

A bald eagle. What?

Yes, a bald eagle. Apparently the eagle had picked up the deer from the nearby field, carried it briefly before losing its grip, and dropped it on the power line. Other reports of bald eagles picking up large animals are rather common. While normally they stick to fish and small animals like rabbits, it’s not uncommon for them to try their luck at larger creatures. There are reports of eagles picking up sheep (weighing up to 130 pounds), knocking mountain goats off cliffs, and even attacking small dogs. Considering the average weight of a bald eagle is around 9 to 14 pounds, this is rather incredible and easily explains how one could pick up a small deer.

But wait. Did we just come full circle? Is it possible that the entity seen in Point Pleasant could possibly have just been a large eagle?

I guess we might never know. I’m going to put this back into the file marked “X”.

Allergic to Bright Lights

Oh boy, mornings. You can either feel fantastic or groggier than ever. Maybe you’re a happy morning person, but odds are you’re a grouchy one. It’s okay, most of the world is. No need to feel bad about yourself.

After getting ready and finally getting out of the house to face the day, you get hit by a sudden and violent urge to sneeze. Hopefully this hits you before you’re behind the wheel of your car, or the violent convulsion might make you temporarily lose control of the vehicle. But you’re used to it, it happens every morning, right?

Well, to about 18% of the world population, yes. To everyone else, you’re probably thinking something along the lines of “what the hell are you talking about?”

Good question!

Photic Sneeze Reflex, or the ACHOO syndrome (autosomal dominate compulsive helio-ophthatic outburst), is what causes a small fraction of the human race to sneeze anytime they see the sun after a while of darkness. Actually it can be any bright light, but most commonly it’s the sun. So why does this happen to some but not others?

In ancient times, Aristotle believed that the sneeze occurred from the heat of the sun irritating our noses. However, eventually this was disproven because the effect only happens when your eyes are open. So what now? Some thought the effect of the bright light making our eyes water some how leaked fluid into our nostrils. Again, this was disproven because the sneeze occurs so rapidly that the fluids wouldn’t have had time to occur. Our tear ducts are notoriously slow at responding, after all.

So what is it then? Scientist have recently decided that it is actually just an evolutionary glitch. Some animals use this reflex as a survival technique. Cats, for example, have eyes that are especially adapted to darker atmospheres. So when it is bright outside, their eyes don’t work as well and they have to rely on their other senses. Thus, the moment their eyes decide it’s too bright outside, they clear their nostrils with a powerful sneeze. But humans don’t need this trait, and it only affects so few of us. What’s the deal?

Another theory is that our wires are simply crossed in our brain. Our eyes see a bright light, they send a signal to constrict the pupils, our brain somehow reads the message as if we have an itchy nose, and responds with a sneeze. Our brain is stupid sometimes.

Luckily, no real harm comes from this. And along with the fact that it only affects so few of the human population, hardly any research has been put into why it happens exactly. If this happens to you, you’re part of a small group of evolutionary survivors. Or you just have jumbled up wiring in your head. You decide. So what’s the cure?

Sunglasses.

Elephant of the American Civil War

“Have you seen the elephant?”

Uh. What?

In 2013 you’d think someone was asking a dumb question. Of course you’ve seen an elephant. Everyone has seen an elephant!

But in 1865? Totally different meaning. Around that time, the “elephant” was a common thing people talked about during the American Civil War. But why?
See, around that time an elephant was thought of as a strange, mythical creature that practically no Europeans or Americans had seen. Nearly hunted to extinction, no quick method of travel, and no real zoos to speak of meant these large mammals were never seen by anyone. But when they were seen, a feeling of overwhelming emotion was pretty common.

Think about it this way. Imagine seeing a dinosaur in real life. A living, breathing dinosaur. You’d get overwhelmed with a sense of awe. Same for Americans in the 1800’s with the elephant.

According to a New York Times article written in 1861, the phrase “have you seen the elephant?” originated from a farmer who, upon hearing that the circus was in town, practically wrecked his horse carriage, destroyed his wagon and injured his horse, but in the end got to see the elephant. He said it was worth it because of how incredible it was seeing the magnificent beast.

So how does this tie into the Civil War and Manifest Destiny? Lets start with the Civil War. Most of these fighters came from farms and boring little lives. They had never experienced the amount of violence and emotional stress they experienced on the battlefield any other time in their life, nor had they been able to try to imagine that it’d be as bad as it was.

So, the climatic levels of emotion became known as “seeing the elephant”. Some saw the elephant and loved it. Others were changed forever. It also became a popular term used during manifest destiny.

During the travels west, people had heard of the beautiful lands, mountains, and freedom. But upon “seeing the elephant”, many of the travellers were greatly disappointed. Their friends and family became ill, most dying. Much of the land was full of hostile tribes, and the terrain was rough and far more expansive than they imagined. Regardless, this realization of the hardship of travelling was known as the elephant.

Over time, this saying became much less common – especially as zoos became more popular. But now, if you ever watch a movie or TV show and hear someone mention seeing an elephant, now you will understand.

Motion Sickness

Did you know that “nausea” is actually derived from a Greek word meaning “seasickness”?  Originally ναυτία, it was used primarily to describe the feeling of intense sickness felt by some while on ships at sea. As far back as the Bronze Age, Babylonians talked about the illness on stone tablets, and the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates even mentions it in his writing.

Can you imagine how odd that must’ve been? For the ancients who spent almost every second of their existence on their feet and solid land, the sensation of desynchronized motion must’ve been a very strange feeling. And that’s exactly what it is – our perception of motion is out of sync in certain situations, causing us to feel incredibly ill. But why is that?

Imagine you’re sitting in a car, staring at the road in front of you as your speed down the highway. You feel fine, right? But imagine the same scenario, but instead of the road, you’re trying to read a book in the moving vehicle. Uh oh, suddenly things aren’t going so well. This same sensation of intense nausea is similar to the feeling you get when you’re in an airplane, a boat, or a roller coaster.

This feeling is originally caused because the sensation of motion felt deep in your inner ear doesn’t match up with what your eyes are seeing. So with the car scenario, your eyes perceive only the page of the book and some of the interior of the car – all of which appears to be motionless to you. However, whether you realize it or not, your inner ears can tell that your body is moving forward in a rapid speed. So your brain freaks out – quite literally.

See, we have no real evolutionary reason to expect fast movements and travel. Unless we’re falling off a cliff, our DNA doesn’t take into account the rapid development of technology and transportation. So you’re sitting still, everything looks normal, but your mind feels like it is moving really fast. Does your brain immediately think “Oh, I’m just reading a book in a moving car”? No, it instead takes the dramatic route and immediately assumes the worst – you’ve been poisoned.

Yes, motion sickness is caused because your body believes it is being poisoned. What does the body do when it’s poisoned? It tries to purge its system of the toxins! So even if you’re just trying to go on a nice fishing trip into the ocean or catch up on your favourite book while on a long bus ride, your body may decide you’re dying and try to save your life by making you violently ill. How nice.

This sensation can be caused by the opposite effect as well – your eyes see movement, but you don’t feel it. Intense action movies or video games can cause this effect. Another variation comes from when you both see motion and feel motion, but they don’t match up with each other. Think of a centrifuge used by astronauts to experience intense g-force. As they are spinning around in a big circle, their eyes see that they are moving forward, but due to the strong centrifugal force being put on their body, their brain feels like it’s moving outwards, away from the center of the centrifuge.  This is called the coriolis effect.

Or you may experience the feeling simply because you’ve been poisoned. There is always that explanation.