Tag: Sensory Receptors

Motion Sickness in Children

Children usually feel sick in the stomach when travelling in a car, airplane, boat or train. This sickness is known as motion sickness. This sickness is caused by reception of wrong signals by eyes, muscles, skin receptors, and inner ears.

While travelling, different body parts send different signals to the brain. Eyes see things around and it sends signals about the direction of movement while in motion. The joint sensory receptors and muscles send signals about the movement of the muscles and the position in which the body is. The skin receptors send signals about the parts of the body which are in contact with the ground. The inner ears have a fluid in the semicircular canals. This fluid senses motion and the direction of motion like forward, backward, up, down, circular, or to and fro. When the brain gets timely reports from the various body parts, it tries to find a relation between all the signals and then sketches a picture about the bodys movement and position at a particular instant. But when the brain isnt able to find a link and isnt able to draw a picture out of the received signals, the condition called motion sickness is experienced.

For example, if a child is riding in a car and reading something at the same time, the eyes will see stationary book. But the skin receptors and the inner ears will sense the body moving in a forward direction. The eyes and the muscle receptors will send signals that the body is not moving. This confuses the brain and everything is jumbled up in the head. This makes the child dizzy, sick in the stomach and even tired. There is a possibility of the child throwing up, so it is recommended that the parents carry a sick bag each time they are travelling with kids. And if the child is feeling anxious or scared, the condition can deteriorate further.

Although there are medicines available over the counter to deal with motion sickness, some measures should be taken to avoid medicine and also motion sickness. The child should always be made to sit facing in the forward direction. He/she should not face or sit backwards, nor should he be made to sit in a seat facing backwards. This helps the ears and the eyes to send similar kind of signal. It is good if the kid isnt involved in some kind of activity like reading, playing video games or something which is stationary. He/she must be asked to look outside, especially at things which are located at a distance. The same applies when travelling in an airplane. When travelling in a boat, the child can go to the upper deck and look at the horizon. Basically, the child must be made to concentrate at things which are located at a distance and are in motion. When looking at something stationary, the eyes get confused and send wrong signals.

It also helps to sit in a place which is moving the least. Usually, it is the center point of the body, so the more close the child sits to the center, the better. Like when in an airplane, it is good to sit in seats in the middle aisle and not in those which are located near the wings. If the child is sitting in the center of the boat, instead of the front or the side, the lesser seasick the child will feel. In spite of all these measures if the child is still feeling sick a doctor should be consulted. The doctor checks the inner ears for any defect. He will also check other body parts which are responsible for sensing motion. Apart from medicine, pressure bracelets are also available at the local pharmacy. And along with carrying a sick bag or any other plastic bag, the car can be pulled over and the child should be walked out a bit to feel better.

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Tips on How to Relieve Anxiety and Stress

It begins with alarm. The muscles, particularly in the face and neck, tighten. The stomach feels knotted. The pulse is rapid, the mouth is dry, and the palms are sweaty. Lactase, a substance released during muscle contractions, appears in the blood. Hormones that speed up the heart and constrict the blood vessels are released. Blood pressure rises.

All of these things constitute to a condition that people commonly know as stress or anxiety. Experts define it as the bodys nonspecific response to any demand made upon it.

After this initial response, the body returns to normal, but maintaining normalcy under stress and anxiety requires all the energy of mind and body. If the stress and anxiety continue long enough, normal functioning cannot be maintained, and the initial alarm responses reappear.

In fact, experts say that even a small amount of additional stress and anxiety at this stage can cause breakdown. Scientific reports show that in small animals, stress beyond the point of endurance has proven deadly.

So how do people manage stress and anxiety? What are the ways on how on how to relieve anxiety and stress? Here are some great tips you must muster to fight back stress and anxiety and live your life to the fullest.

1. Exercise

Regular exercise helps to relax a tense body and a stressed mind because it helps uplift depression and improve mood. It can also decrease the activity of the sensory receptors in the muscle, which send information to the central nervous system. Tension makes these receptors oversensitive so that they bombard the nervous system with electrical impulses.

Exercise can also cut down on the overload on the nervous system by quieting the electrical signals from the muscles. Best of all, exercise induces and enhances the ability to sleep restfully.

2. Take out a multivitamin or mineral insurance policy

Physiological and emotional stress can rob the body of important nutrients, including antioxidant vitamins. In times of stress and anxiety, free radicals, such as unstable molecules of harmful chemicals, can increase and sack the bodys health fragments for substitute electrons, parting uninhibited radicals and impaired tissues and cells in their body.

Anti-oxidants, most particularly vitamins E, beta-carotene, and vitamin C protect the bodys healthy fragments by giving up their personal electrons to counteract free-radical attackers. So to arm yourself against a stress-induced free-radical invasion, take a daily multivitamin or mineral induced supplement.

How Does Exercise Acts as Tranquilizer?

Scientists do not understand the precise how and why yet. They believe that certain brain chemicals found in relaxed states are released during exercise.

In experiments with cats, researchers found that the activity of the muscle receptors was reduced when the temperature of the receptors themselves or of the hypothalamus, a region in the brain, was raised. Vigorous exercise is one way of raising these temperatures and, perhaps, of slowing the receptors activity.

Some investigators suggest that the tightening of the muscles associated with tension causes chronic over-arousal and over-activity of the nervous system. Moving the muscles, they say, may be necessary to keep the muscle receptors transmissions to the nervous system at a normal level.

Mental health professionals have begun to study the effects of exercise on emotional disturbances. No one is suggesting that people can quite literally run away from our problems, but one psychologist did find that depressed patients improved significantly after ten weeks of jogging.

All of these things are boiled down to the fact that exercise is one of the best solutions to relieve people from stress and anxiety.