Carnival-Ride Nausea All Part of Aging
hubie writes:
Vestibular function expert says the young are better equipped to handle carnival rides:
Is the classic Tilt-A-Whirl now more of a Tilt-and-Hurl? Has a ride on the Zipper become a stomach flipper?
Take solace, aging Calgary Stampede midway fans: finding nausea where you once sought the thrills-and-spills joy of carnival rides is not only common, it's also as much a part of getting older as wrinkles and grey hair.
"I suspect it is some degree of sensory incongruence that crops up when older adults hop on a midway ride, which is something they likely don't do very often in everyday life," says Dr. Ryan Peters, PhD, assistant professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute in the Cumming School of Medicine.
Peters has spent a lot of time studying the vestibular system, part of your inner ear that senses head motion and relays this to the brain to help regulate balance, and compensate for external forces like those experienced on a ride and Earth's gravity.
[...] "This is analogous to the hearing loss we experience with age - both the auditory and vestibular systems rely on tiny, delicate, hair cell receptors in the inner ear to detect sound pressure waves and head motion," says Peters. "We lose these hair cells across the lifespan at a steady rate."
In basic terms, we need those receptors to help our brain deal with the sensory information that comes with a thrill ride at the Stampede, and when the vestibular system can't keep up, we get sick.
[...] The good news? Practice can reduce this effect, with the human nervous system able to adjust and compensate for this type of incongruence.
[...] "That would mean that older adults should just hop on more and more midway rides to alleviate their symptoms," says Peters.
The Calgary Stampede is a large annual festival held in July in Calgary, Canada that includes midway rides such as the Zipper.
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