How Vision Therapy Can Help with Motion Sickness
Medication isn't the only solution if you suffer from motion sickness. Improving the coordination between your brain and eyes with vision therapy could help you avoid dizziness, nausea, and vomiting caused by motion sickness. Whether you're spending the day at the amusement park, riding in a car, or taking a cruise vision therapy could help reduce your motion sickness symptoms.
What Is Motion Sickness?
Your eyes, inner ear, and body constantly send messages to your brain about the position of your head, the parts of your body you're moving, and which direction you're facing. Motion sickness happens when the brain becomes confused by conflicting information from the body, eyes, and inner ears. Your eyes detect movement, but your inner ear and body tell your brain that you aren't moving. The common problems affects about 1/3 of all people, according to Medline Plus.
Although traveling in cars, boats, trains, airplanes, and other moving vehicles may trigger motion sickness, it can also happen when you play video or virtual reality games. According to a comparative study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 2018, cybersickness and classic motion sickness symptoms are very similar.
Motion sickness symptoms include:
- Feeling Hot. As motion sickness starts, you may begin to feel hot and sweaty.
- Excess Saliva. Motion sickness may prompt your body to produce more saliva than normal.
- Dizziness. It's not unusual to feel dizzy or lightheaded if you're suffering from motion sickness.
- Headache. A headache can occur as your brain struggles to understand the information it receives.
- Eye Issues. Your eyes may hurt or you may notice everything looks a little blurry.
- Nausea. Nausea is the symptom most associated with motion sickness.
- Vomiting. If you ignore early symptoms of motion sickness and don't stop the motion, vomiting may soon occur.
How Do Vision Problems Trigger Motion Sickness?
Avoiding motion sickness may be difficult if you have a visual problem that causes or contributes to motion sickness. Problems that can make you more sensitive to motion sickness include:
- Binocular Vision Problems. Binocular vision issues occur when your eyes are misaligned or don't work together as a team. Misaligned eyes send slightly different information to the brain, making it difficult to create a single sharp image. Blurry vision caused by poor binocular vision, whether blurriness is constant or only happens occasionally, can be a factor in motion sickness. The risk of motion sickness is closely associated with binocular vision issues, according to a research study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine in 2026.
- Focusing Issues. Reading a book or looking at an object close to your face requires good focusing skills. Normally, both eyes turn inward slightly when you focus. If one eye doesn't turn inward quite as far as the other, focusing problems can occur, including issues with smooth focus shifts. For example, shifting your gaze from your book to the view outside the car window may trigger motion sickness.
- Eye Tracking Issues. Good eye tracking skills help you keep your place when you read and track a ball as it sails through the sky. Poor eye tracking skills may make it difficult to keep up with the rapidly changing scenery outside the car window.
- Poor Communication Between the Eyes and Ears. Motion sickness may also be related to communication issues that control balance, motion detection and vision.
- Visual Processing Difficulties. A delay in processing visual information received from the eyes could trigger motion sickness.
How Does Vision Therapy Improve Motion Sickness?
Vision therapy treats visual conditions that make you more sensitive to the effects of motion. Hands-on activities, video and virtual reality games, and other vision therapy activities improve coordination between the eyes and brain and help you use your vision more effectively.
Vision therapy eases motion sickness by:
- Improving Eye Teaming, Coordination, Tracking, and Focusing
- Helping the Eyes and Ears Work Together More Effectively
- Enhancing Visual Stability When Moving
- Boosting Visual Processing Skills and Speeds
Are you ready to put an end to your motion sickness? Vision therapy offers a natural solution. Contact our office to schedule an appointment with the vision therapist.
Sources:
American Medical Association: What Doctors Want Patients to Know About Motion Sickness, 5/8/2026
MedlinePlus: Motion Sickness, 5/1/2018
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/motion-sickness/#inheritance
American Optometric Association: Convergence Insufficiency
https://www.aoa.org/healthy-eyes/eye-and-vision-conditions/convergence-insufficiency
Journal of Applied Physiology: A Comparative Study of Cybersickness During Exposure to Virtual Reality and “Classic” Motion Sickness: Are They Different, 12/2018
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00338.2018
PubMed: Journal of Clinical Medicine: Motion Sickness, Binocular Visual Functions, and Visual Perception, 2/15/2026