Study on seasickness: Seasick at sea and on land? Sailor researches vitamin C

Mini-Transat skipper Lina Rixgens has dedicated herself to a new goal. This does not take place on the water - but at university. Nevertheless, everything revolves around the topic of sailing. The 27-year-old is currently doing her doctorate on the subject of seasickness. As part of this doctorate at Kiel University, the young doctor, who completed a medical degree in Belgium in parallel to her Mini-Transat campaigns in 2017 and 2021, has developed a study that is about to be finalised. She is supported by the Naval Medical Institute of the Navy in Kronshagen.

Even though this has already been the subject of previous studies, Rixgens wants to get to the bottom of three questions in particular in her work "Vitamin C and seasickness" (see also interview in YACHT 11/2021):

Does vitamin C help against seasickness at sea?

Does vitamin C help against simulator sickness when wearing virtual reality goggles on land?

Are sailors prone to seasickness also more susceptible in the simulator?

She split the data collection into two parts: one at sea and one on land. In the study parton the water 30 sailors have so far chewed a high-dose vitamin C chewing gum containing 250 milligrams of vitamin C during a long-distance regatta lasting over 24 hours. Every three hours, they ticked a box on a scale to document how they felt.

Back on land, another questionnaire had to be completed. "Around 90 per cent responded that the chewing gum helps," reports Rixgens in an interview with YACHT online. "However, there are still too few participants to be able to make precise statements." The young sailing doctor therefore wants to involve at least 20 more in the research work. She is hoping for active participation from sailors prone to seasickness during the Rund Skagen and Baltic 500 regattas.

In the study sectionon landRixgens is interested in finding out whether vitamin C is also effective against so-called simulator sickness. "It is also one of the motion sicknesses and works in exactly the opposite way to seasickness: the eye is tricked into believing that the world is swaying despite a fixed environment," explains Rixgens.

Basically, the symptoms of motion sickness are caused in particular by the body's own messenger substance histamine. However, a high vitamin C level in the blood lowers the histamine level and should therefore also alleviate the symptoms of motion sickness.

So far, 90 sailors in the study have been asked to show whether this also applies in the simulator. Over the past few months, they have each spent 30 minutes in sailing clubs in northern and western Germany watching a film with wave movements through virtual reality goggles. Beforehand, they chewed a vitamin C chewing gum - or a placebo.

From her initial results, Rixgens draws the - quite obvious - conclusion that sailors prone to seasickness also get sick more quickly in the simulator, meaning that they are more susceptible to motion sickness overall. However, the vitamin C chewing gum appears to have little effect in the simulator, or - as Rixgens puts it: "The dosage used does not provide a statistically significant advantage over the placebo. However, other studies, for example one that was carried out years ago in the life raft in the wave pool in Neustadt, suggest that this is the case with a higher dosage." At that time, vitamin C chewing gums with 2,000 milligrams each were used.

90 per cent of the one hundred participants required for the simulator study have so far supported Rixgens in collecting data. Now only ten are missing. There is one more date for them this spring: on 21 and 22 May at the clubhouse of the Altona-Oevelgönne Sailing Association in Hamburg, between 10 am and 7 pm. We are still looking for sailors who are interested in taking part. You should be seaworthy and have about two hours to spare. You can register directly by e-mail to Lina Rixgens: lina.rixgens@stu.uni-kiel.de.

By the way: You can already get an impression of what the test subjects see through the VR glasses here:

Up and down through a short wave. Lina Rixgens took the photos on the bow of her mini. Staring at it for 30 minutes means: hang in there!

Lina Rixgens herself has rarely been seen on the water recently. She has ended her mini-career - at least for the time being - to devote herself entirely to medicine. She has been working as a junior doctor in Hamburg since the beginning of the year and is training to become a specialist in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine.

She is still out on the regatta course, but only at weekends or on holiday. And instead of sailing solo, she now sails double-handed or with a crew on a Dehler 30 OD on the Baltic Sea instead of the open Atlantic.

More on the topic: A portrait of Lina Rixgens was published in YACHT 21/2016. And you can read about what it feels like to race across the Kiel Fjord with the offshore sailor on her Mini 6.50 in YACHT 21/2020.