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I have always gotten motion sickness and it’s always been the pits. I seem to be, literally, the only person in the family who suffers the affliction and my family LOVES driving around. Seriously. It’s this whole big thing. When I was a kid my dad would come home from work on some Fridays with the desire to wander and we’d all load up in the car and just go. We’d wind up at Sears in Arkansas, or wherever we could get by dark, buying clothes for the next day and the ride back home. Many times we didn’t do anything but ride in the car. We didn’t drive to get to a park or something, we drove until my dad was done driving and then we went home.
We also spent every summer in Colorado for just about as long as I can remember and when you’ve got a dad that likes to drive we spent a lot of time in his black Bronco winding up and down mountains. When we’d get to either the top or the bottom to hit the restrooms I was almost always practically green. Ugh. There are so many vacations as a kid where that’s what I remember most. Riding in the car trying not to get sick and hoping my sister wouldn’t start making vomiting noises to rile me up, payback for the times when I was an ass to her for other reasons. Ugh.
Last year Rob and I went bay fishing out at South Padre Island and it was our second trip. Literally, as we drove out there I said over and over and over that the water looked too choppy and that I didn’t want to go. But it was Rob’s birthday and he played the promise card and so I went onto this boat where I then made his birthday one to remember as I whined and complained and wigged out so incredibly seasick for 3 hours. It. Was. The. WORST.
The next time we went out the water seemed fine but I was well stocked with goods to help me through even the tiniest bit of motion sickness, including a tiny bottle of essential oil blend to combat my seasickness. As it turns out when the water is calm and I have the proper tools I can totally enjoy bay fishing and totally whoop Rob’s rear at bringing the fish up out of the water :) That day was doubly nice because I totally felt like a guardian angel. Armed with my bottle of oils I went around and visited the people being sick over the edge of the boat, giving them a little dab every once in a while to help ease their troubles. One man was having the WORST time I’d ever seen and he told me that he’d already taken pills and they hadn’t worked and he doesn’t “believe in voodoo” turning down my oils. But his wife came to me, asked to borrow the bottle with apologies and he later came by to thank me and tell me that he was amazed at the difference. His nausea knocked down considerably, he lay on a bench and let those pills knock him out and slept through the rest of the trip that was pure hell for the pure guy.
Now, this might not be a perfect solution for everybody, but for me and this guy, this blend of essential oils is the perfect way to ease motion sickness. I’d strongly recommend trying this in a calmer situation like riding in the car than heading out for a 3-hour tour on the ocean or, heaven forbid, whipping around on a dang roller coaster to make sure that it works well for you. You can tweak the essential oils in the blend to better work for you. I’ve found that peppermint does the best for me to combat nausea, so this blend is heavy with it, but I also take a pocket full of peppermints that I suck on when things get going to help keep my stomach calm. My sister has found great relief with ginger, but I cannot stomach the taste or smell. If you don’t care for the smell of peppermint you can easily substitute it for ginger essential oil instead.
Want to try and tackle nausea naturally with these essential oils for motion sickness in a convenient roll on?
- roll on bottles
- roll on tools including key tool and funnel (included with the bottles I’ve linked to above)
- carrier oil (like sweet almond oil or fractionated coconut oil)
- lavender essential oil
- peppermint essential oil
- frankincense essential oil
- myrrh essential oil
- ylang ylang essential oil
- chamomile essential oil
To make this as convenient as possible for travel I purchased some really pretty roll on bottles. These ombre beauties are glass and go from pink to red, purple to yellow and blue to teal. So pretty. Plus they come with a tool to help you easily pop the roller out, a few funnels and a couple of extra rollers all for super cheap. It’s a total score.
To get started, use the tool to grab the plastic surrounding the roller. Wiggle the tool to begin pushing the roller up and out of the glass bottle.
Set the roller to the side (careful not to lose it)!
Place a small funnel into the glass vial and get your essential oils nearby and easily accessible.
Now I’m not a mathematician but I had to figure out how much my roller would hold. If you get the same rollers, these hold 10ml apiece. After some research, I found that 1ml equals approximately 20 drops of essential oil. FYI, this is an average as overly viscous or super thin oils might be different.
Since my vial holds 10ml, that means at max capacity it can hold 10ml x 20 drops or 200 drops. And since we need to dilute the essential oils with a carrier oil, we only want to fill up the vial about 50% with essential oil blend which means my numbers will need to be halved.
Our formula is made up of 6 different essential oils including lavender, peppermint, frankincense, myrrh, ylang ylang, and chamomile. I worked up the ratio that seems to work best for me and that is 5 drops of each lavender and peppermint per 3 drops of each of the other oils individually.
Since my little glass roller holds a max of 200 drops but I only want to fill it halfway, I’m going to use 25 drops of lavender, 25 of peppermint and then 15 each of the other 4 oils for a total of 110 drops, slightly over my 100 drop halfway point.
In all things, homemade substitutions are totally acceptable. Not everybody digs peppermint and for some ginger works a lot better, for example. Feel free to sub what you have or what you prefer in the recipe above. Before committing to any blend, especially with expensive oils like frankincense and myrrh, scale it back and give it a go to ensure that the blend works well for you and yours to abate your motion sickness and nausea. There’s nothing worse than wasting 45 drops of expensive essential oil for something that doesn’t work for YOU.
To mix your blend simply drop the oil in the required amounts into the vial through the funnel. Some oils are slippery and fast to drip out and others are so thick and slow you might get sleepy counting them out, but do your best :)
Top the essential oils off with a carrier oil (I like sweet almond oil because I can easily get it at Walmart or the grocery store) to finish the blend off.
Pop the roller back in by pushing it straight down until it clicks into place.
Cap up the vial and give the bottle a few twists and turns to mix up the oils and it’s ready for use.
This little roll on of essential oils for motion sickness fits conveniently in a purse or pocket and can be whipped out and used as needed. Because I tend to suffer nausea on a regular basis, I actually keep some of the blend nearby in areas I frequent, especially in my desk drawer for use when I’m working and don’t want to take anything that might make me sleepy.
To use I prefer to roll directly behind my ears but if I’m really, really feeling awful I’ll straight up put the roller beneath my nose and smell the oils straight from the vial. Do whatever works for you! Essential oils for motion sickness has been such an amazing thing for me and I hope it helps you and yours out, too!
