This was the home remedy for carsickness my parents used with me when I was a kid. "Look at the horizon" is how they put it. Within a couple of seconds I'd internalize the movement of the car and my gut would stabilize.

I was a miserable vomitous mass as a child and I still can't read in the car. The horizon tends to stop progression of symptoms but is pretty slow as a recovery method. It's pretty cold comfort for someone who feels like their guts are trying to escape.

At some point in late grade school I figured out it was a better use of my time to start "working the problem" rather than hold out for some folk wisdom to save me, from car sickness to sore throats (keep your neck warm to prevent laryngitis) and everything in between.

Hanging a hand out the window works much, much faster. Barring that, anything cold on the wrist will help, but it's hard to find the right spot while distressed. Air, window pane in the winter, ice, icepack (best runner up), or a can of soda.

I don't get motion sick, and now I realize the concept of being on a boat and feeling as if the ocean is moving back and forth is completely alien to me. When I'm on a boat, the horizon appears perfectly still to me. If the boat tips, the boat looks like it's tipping to me. Likewise, if I stand on my head, the world looks right side up, but I feel as if I'm upside down. In movies sometimes they'll place a camera upside down to indicate a character is doing sit-ups on a hanging bar or something and I always thought that was a silly way to portray that since the world doesn't look upside down when you are.

Similar theories for why memory and smell are so tied, and why certain smells make you throw up.

I heard they experimented with lacing sheep carcasses with ipecac syrup in Africa to keep the lions away, and it worked. You remember - viscerally - what made you sick and you avoid eating it again.

Sounds like taste aversion.

That's how I was taught to counter motion sickness in the 80s, when we were nomadic (of sorts) and did lots of cross-country drives. We didn't necessarily have to look straight ahead, but look out the window to see the motion while consciously thinking about the fact that we are actually moving. Eg, we were told to "think about the engine pushing the wheels, and the wheels pushing the road, and that's why we're moving".

30+ years later I still use that trick on the very rare occasion when I get motion sickness, and it still seems to work fine.

Among the best solutions for seasickness are to watch the horizon, steer the boat, remove as much clothing as comfort allows, make sure there’s fatty food in your stomach, and stand so that your body is oriented in the direction of the boat’s motion.

I know those work anecdotally (for me and others with whom I’ve been on boats). They were explained to me by an ENT dr during a sailboat race to Bermuda about 20 years ago. His explanation was that it was about aligning the different signals the brain gets during motion.

The headband sounds interesting. There’s few things I’ve experienced that are more miserable than extended motion sickness.