Instructions
Motion Sickness – aromatics to reduce motion sickness whether on a boat, bus, auto, plane, or train.
I combined nausea relieving ginger, a citrus, and peppermint along with calming lavender to reduce the feelings of motion sickness and provide calm.
Contact Bobbi to order.
Inhaler tube with essential oils of Lavender, Peppermint, Lemon, and Ginger. This can be whiffed on as needed.
$7.00 for a plastic tube
$12.00 for a metal tube (looks like a lipstick tube)
Spritzer – ingredients: sesame oil, lemon hydrosol and essential oils of Peppermint, Lime, Lavender, and Ginger
1 oz mister bottle $10.00
2 oz mister bottle $17.00
Shake vigorously before every use. Spritz a little on your wrists, neck, and just above your navel (massage in around under the ribs and in the order of digestion.
Use your fingertips to apply to temples as well if you like
And lastly take a fresh piece of ginger root with you!
Chew on a small piece of ginger root with or without the skin. If organic leave the skin on. You can lick, suck on it, or bite off a tiny piece to chew on.
These ingredients work through several different biological mechanisms, which is why they’re effective together:
Lavender’s primary active compounds (linalool and linalyl acetate) have a calming effect on the nervous system. Motion sickness has a strong anxiety/stress component — lavender reduces the nervous system’s overreaction to conflicting sensory signals (what your eyes see vs. what your inner ear feels). It also has mild antiemetic (anti-nausea) properties.
Peppermint is probably the most directly effective ingredient for nausea due to menthol:
- It activates cold receptors in the mouth/nose/stomach, which can interrupt nausea signals
- It relaxes the smooth muscle of the GI tract, reducing spasms and the urge to vomit
- It may inhibit serotonin receptors in the gut — serotonin is a key trigger of the vomiting reflex
Lemon and Lime’s sharp, clean scent (limonene) is thought to work partly by giving the brain a dominant, grounding sensory signal that overrides or competes with nausea-inducing stimuli. There’s also some evidence that citrus scents reduce salivation changes associated with nausea. It’s particularly effective for the “smell-triggered” component of motion sickness.
Ginger has the most research behind it due to its active compounds — gingerols and shogaols:
- Blocking serotonin (5-HT3) receptors in the gut, similar to how some prescription antiemetics work
- inhibit substance P (a neuropeptide involved in vomiting and pain), and has a direct anti-inflammatory effect on the gut lining.
- Ginger helps regulate abnormal gastric contractions that occur during motion sickness, while also accelerating gastric emptying in cases of delayed stomach clearance — both effects reducing the unsettled, full-stomach sensation that worsens nausea.
(It’s dosed “5+” because ginger’s effect is somewhat dose-dependent — more can mean stronger relief.)
Motion sickness is multi-layered — it involves sensory conflict in the brain, nervous system stress, and GI distress — your eyes, inner ear, and proprioceptive system sends contradictory information to the brain.
This blend hits all three layers simultaneously: lavender calms the neurological response, peppermint and ginger address the gut directly, and lemon provides grounding ‘olfactory interference’.
Inhaling vs. ingesting works better in this case because smell’s direct, fast pathway to the brain bypassing slower digestive absorption.
Lastly as a side note, I was wondering why the studies used oils to block serotonin in the gut. So I asked AI, this was the response:
“About 95% of the body’s serotonin is actually produced in the gut, not the brain — specifically in enterochromaffin cells lining the intestinal wall. When the gut is disturbed (by toxins, chemotherapy, motion, etc.), these cells release a flood of serotonin as an alarm signal. That serotonin then binds to 5-HT3 receptors on the vagus nerve, which carries the distress signal up to the brainstem — specifically to the area postrema and the nucleus tractus solitarius, which together form the brain’s vomiting control center. The brain interprets this signal as “something harmful is in the gut, expel it,” and triggers nausea and vomiting.
So blocking 5-HT3 receptors in the gut essentially intercepts that alarm signal before it ever reaches the brain. The enterochromaffin cells still release serotonin, but with the receptors blocked, the vagus nerve never gets the message, and the vomiting center is never activated.
What makes this particularly relevant to motion sickness is that the sensory conflict from mismatched vestibular and visual signals can similarly trigger serotonin release in the gut as part of the body’s stress response — which is part of why the same receptor pathway is involved in both chemotherapy nausea and motion sickness, even though the triggers are completely different.
It’s essentially the body’s poison-detection system misfiring, and blocking serotonin is like cutting the wire between the detector and the alarm
References
Lavender
Kashiwadani, H., Mutoh, T., Monma, Y., Matsuda, R., Yamamoto, M., Onaka, T., & Kuwaki, T. (2018). Linalool odor-induced anxiolytic effects in mice. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 12, 241. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00241
Kessler, A., Sahin-Pekmez, E., Lohr, S., Krug, M., Seifert, K., Sanchev, M., & Bhatt, P. (2017). Metabolic products of linalool and modulation of GABA-A receptors. Frontiers in Chemistry, 5, 46. https://doi.org/10.3389/fchem.2017.00046
Haghighi, M., Motlagh, M. G., & Razian, A. (2023). Aromatherapy for the brain: Lavender’s healing effect on epilepsy, depression, anxiety, migraine, and Alzheimer’s disease. Heliyon, 9(7). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18042(via ScienceDirect/PMC)
Peppermint
Chumpitazi, B. P., Kearns, G. L., & Shulman, R. J. (2018). Review article: The physiological effects and safety of peppermint oil and its efficacy in irritable bowel syndrome and other functional disorders. Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 47(6), 738–752. https://doi.org/10.1111/apt.14519
Amato, A., Liotta, R., & Mulè, F. (2014). Effects of menthol on circular smooth muscle of human colon: Analysis of the mechanism of action. European Journal of Pharmacology, 740, 295–301. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejphar.2014.07.018
Roth, B. L., & colleagues. (2019). Natural negative allosteric modulators of 5-HT3 receptors. PMC/Frontiers.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6321066/
Lemon/Lime
Heimes, K., Hauk, F., & Verspohl, E. J. (2010). Mode of action of peppermint oil and (−)-menthol with respect to 5-HT3 receptor subtypes. Phytotherapy Research, 25(5), 702–708. (Referenced via Ascents essential oil research synthesis)
Navari, R. M. (2015). 5-HT3 receptors as important mediators of nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 1848(10), 2738–2746. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbamem.2015.03.020
Ginger
Abdel-Aziz, H., Windeck, T., Ploch, M., & Verspohl, E. J. (2006). Mode of action of gingerols and shogaols on 5-HT3 receptors: Binding studies, cation uptake by the receptor channel and contraction of isolated guinea-pig ileum. European Journal of Pharmacology, 530(1–2), 136–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejphar.2005.11.023
Kim, S., et al. (2022). The antiemetic mechanisms of gingerols against chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. PMC. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8893993/
Marx, W., et al. (2017). Ginger — mechanism of action in chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting: A review. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 57(1), 141–146. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2013.865590