from the wait-until-you-get-older-and-your-body-betrays-you-in-other-ways dept.
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.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Gaaark on Thursday July 14 2022, @11:50AM
Just wait, guys, 'til you start tea-bagging the toilet water!
Strange fruit, indeed.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 14 2022, @01:55PM
Seriously, it's named the Vomitron, they want $25 per passenger to induce you to hurl chunks at your friends on the ground while they take cell-videos of you. For and extra $10 they'll give you a (clean) T-shirt and a USB stick with a video of your experience (and probably a bot-net installer as well).
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday July 14 2022, @03:31PM
When the minibus brings you back to the retirement home after a fun day at the amusement park, you can strut around in the lobby covered in sick, making all the wheelchair-bound residents who couldn't come along mad with jealousy.
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday July 14 2022, @11:52PM (1 child)
I thought it was obvious that practice alleviates this effect. Astronauts and fighter/test pilots are put through this type of stuff but get used to it. They aren’t necessarily young either, how old was Neil Armstrong when he walked in the moon, for example. I’m in my early 40s and if I spin with my kids in arms, after about 6 rotations, I’m feeling queezy already.
I just need to practice, and vomit a lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2022, @07:46PM
So even when I wasn't that old (20s) I had long skipped the rides that had lots of spinning and went for the other rides which were more thrilling (loops, heights etc).
But of course if I had the opportunity to be flown in a modern jet fighter for free or something then sure I'd put up with whatever nausea I'd get.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 15 2022, @03:00PM
We learned yesterday that a family member of ours has vasovagal syncope [wikipedia.org].
IOW, certain motions, sights, sounds, etc. can trigger an autonomic nerve response that causes dizziness and other symptoms.
So if you or somebody you know gets dizzy on amusement park rides, with their abrupt changes in motion or strobing lights, a vasovagal response (apparently it's very common), not an inner ear issue, could be an additional explanation.
Washington DC delenda est.