Doctors won’t always tell you about it. Pharmaceutical companies definitely won’t. But millions of travelers have quietly been using the same remedy for thousands of years, and the science is finally proving them right.
Motion sickness is one of travel’s great equalizers. It doesn’t care how seasoned a traveler someone is or how much they’ve spent on their trip.
According to MedlinePlus, around one in three people are highly susceptible to it, and nearly anyone can be brought down by rough enough conditions.
For those who’ve spent a ferry crossing horizontal on a bench, or white-knuckled a mountain bus ride willing the switchbacks to end, the hunt for something that actually works is deeply personal.
Prescription medications do exist, but they come with a familiar list of side effects: drowsiness, dry mouth, a foggy, disconnected feeling that can take the edge off an entire travel day. There has to be a better option.
Turns out there is, and it’s been in most people’s kitchens the whole time.
Why Ginger Actually Works
This isn’t folk wisdom in search of credibility. The research genuinely backs it up.
Travel expert James Steele from Go2Africa points out that ginger has been used to calm nausea for centuries, and modern science has spent considerable energy figuring out why. The short answer: it works on multiple levels.
Ginger improves digestion, soothes the gastrointestinal tract, and blocks the abnormal electrical patterns in the stomach known as gastric dysrhythmias. Those dysrhythmias are what trigger the queasy downward spiral that makes motion sickness so unpleasant.
Dr. Uma Darji, a board-certified family medicine physician, is equally direct. Ginger has far more scientific credibility than most people realize. It acts on the gastrointestinal system and may also interact with the central nervous system to reduce nausea at the source.
She regularly recommends it to patients who’d rather skip the medication, whether in the form of tea, chews, or capsules.
The clinical evidence is worth knowing in detail. A 2020 study published in Current Therapeutic Research followed 184 adults who had a documented history of motion sickness.
Participants traveled by bus, car, ferry, train, or subway across four separate trips. On the first, they took nothing. On each of the following three trips, they took a single ginger tablet 15 minutes before departure.
The results were striking. Using the Motion Sickness Assessment Questionnaire, average scores dropped from around 40 points down to roughly 25, with measurable improvements in nausea, dizziness, and fatigue across the board.
A small number of participants noticed increased indigestion and burping, which researchers attributed to the ginger itself. For most people, that trade-off is an easy one.
The mechanism appears to be twofold: ginger settles the gut and prevents the stomach contractions that set off nausea in the first place, while also quieting the signals the stomach sends to the brain when motion starts to feel overwhelming.
How to Use It
Hussain Ahmad, a consultant practitioner at Click2Pharmacy, confirms that ginger tablets, tea, and crystallized ginger are all effective and safe for most people. Those who are pregnant or taking blood thinners should check with a doctor or pharmacist before using it.
For the best results, Steele recommends drinking ginger tea 30 to 60 minutes before departure. That window gives the body enough time to absorb the active compounds before motion begins.
Packing ginger candies for the journey helps sustain the effect, but there’s one important caveat: the product needs to contain real ginger extract or crystallized ginger. Artificial ginger flavoring, which appears in plenty of ginger-branded candies, won’t deliver the same results.
The Stranger Remedies That Travelers Swear By
Ginger has the science behind it. These next options are a little more unusual, but they have passionate advocates among frequent flyers and seasoned cruise workers.
Green apple. The sour taste stimulates saliva production in a way that appears to calm the stomach. It’s a well-known trick among regular cruisers.
Smelling a lemon. The theory is that the citrus scent can interrupt the nausea signal before it fully takes hold, essentially giving the brain something else to focus on.
Blowing on your thumb. This one raises eyebrows, but the claim is that it activates a nerve response that reduces stress and settles anxiety. Whether that translates to less seasickness is hard to say, but it costs absolutely nothing to try mid-crossing.
For the vast majority of travelers, ginger remains the most practical and well-supported option of all. It’s available at any grocery store or health food store across the US, requires no prescription, and takes up almost no space in a carry-on bag.
For a problem that affects a third of the traveling population, that’s a remarkably low-effort fix.