So I have recently been on a very bumby boat ride and once i finally could lie down on my bed
It feels like I’m still on the boat, of that makes sense
I can still feel like the rocking and the waves rocking
What cause this?
So I have recently been on a very bumby boat ride and once i finally could lie down on my bed
It feels like I’m still on the boat, of that makes sense
I can still feel like the rocking and the waves rocking
What cause this?
Comments
That’s sea legs.
Your senses have adapted to you standing on a moving surface where it has to continuously adjust your balance. When you get off the boat it keeps continuously adjusting your equilibrium which makes it feel like you’re still standing on a rocking boat.
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I did a week long yacht tour and I had that feeling for 2 days after. It was not pleasant.
What causes it is the same part of your body that allows you to stand upright on two legs instead of four. Otherwise a breeze would come along and knock you on your ass, and you would never be able to run.
Deep inside each of your ears is a canal that has fluid in it.
That canal’s fluid gets pushed to the left, it registers as “HEY I MOVED”. Or when it spins around, or when it goes over a roller coaster hump, or when you are about to trip and fall, or… on and on. Those movements change the pressure in that canal in a way that drives your brain to automatically drive your sense of balance.
Now, you can frig up that automatic drive in a few ways. One is to get drunk or sick, and you get so dizzy that you might throw up because your body thinks you might have eaten something poisonous. Another is to have an infection in there that causes the sensitive tissues to swell up and frig with everything.
A third (and relevant here) is to keep experiencing something that changes that pressure until it’s “normal” for you.
Eventually, that brain of yours gets used to new conditions you place on it, like the rolling and rocking sensation of being on a boat for a long time. So your brain starts to just deal with it on autopilot so you don’t have to think about it.
Take away the rocking and rolling after it’s become normal for you, and now you have a “new normal”, and it takes your brain a while to adjust its interpretation of what’s NO LONGER GOING ON in your ears. Until that happens, your brain keeps rocking and rolling you.
I have been on a boat for more than 3 months, so looking forward to going home tomorrow.
I get this after sitting on a dock all day fishing
Look up disembarkment syndrome – I experience this with long plane rides
I always used to get that as a kid if I’d been on a trampoline that day
Our brains and bodies are weird, “sea legs” is a good example.
And try this… stand in an open doorway in your house, with your hands at your sides. Push your arms out so your forearms and the backs of your hands are against the door jamb. Now start pushing, as if you wanted to bust the door frame apart. Really push hard with some strain for 30 seconds or so. Now take a step forward and drop your arms to your sides – they’ll try to levitate, as if they’re still pushing on the walls. (Though that may be a muscle thing, like blood’s pumped into your arms and is still “pushing”, I dunno but that amazed us when we were kids).
Fun fact, there have been rare cases of people departing from a normal boat trip and having this sensation never go away for the rest of their lives, 24/7
Aswell as getting whilst on a boat. I also get this after flying with turbulence sometimes
That’s called Disembarkation Syndrome, or Mal de Débarquement Syndrome if you’re fancy. Basically your brain has gotten comfortable with a sensation, and now it has to get comfortable to not having that sensation any more.
In the case of boats (and astronauts, but they call it Space Adaptation Syndrome) the sensation is coming from the organs that make up your vestibular system.
The feeling is called ‘land sickness’:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusions_of_self-motion#Sea_legs,_dock_rock,_or_stillness_illness
Its caused by the body’s proprioception and vestibular systems, which adapted to the background noise of rocking in the waves. The brain wants to optimize environmental inputs for efficiency, and it takes time for neurons and their pathways to adjust to new environments.
That’s land sickness, and it’s quite common. I was a whale cruise zodiac Captain for one of my summer jobs, and had this feeling a lot.
I also sailed on a boat for 5 months once, didn’t get off the boat for the full length of that period, and when I came off I had land sickness for almost a week. I once had to hold to the walls in a big hallway in a public building, because the hallway was wide and long and I had issues understanding the space around me.
Try living on one for months, sometimes it takes weeks for the sensation to go away lol
The fun thing is that you can prevent it via prophylactic seasickness medication. I had this for 3 days after a cruise and it sucked, so I talked to my doctor before my next cruise. She prescribed the patches and told me to start them the day before and take them throughout the cruise. Worked like a charm! (I know everyone is unique, but I wanted to give you a little hope for future boating adventures.)
It’s psychological, you think back on the day lying down and trick your half-asleep brain into thinking you’re still on a boat.
Once your brain figures out sea legs it’s almost like a passive sensory filter you can flip on/off at need.
I had this exact thing, but my sense of equilibrium being off/vertigo was ALWAYS when I showered. I couldn’t tell you what prompted that, but another coworker told me it was the same for him. Maybe cuz I would get off work, sit in my truck for an hour to get home, then shower first thing? It made for pretty quick showers for six months.
this happens to me but with elevators and I hate it