{"id":132,"date":"2011-01-13T14:45:43","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T18:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/?p=132"},"modified":"2011-01-14T09:20:47","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T13:20:47","slug":"better-living-through-chemistry-the-coast-guard-cocktail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/2011\/01\/13\/better-living-through-chemistry-the-coast-guard-cocktail\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Living Through Chemistry – The Coast Guard Cocktail"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ten foot seas south of the Falkland Islands.<\/p><\/div>\n

Every time I go to sea I am reminded that I get very, very sea-sick. \u00a0As child I grew up on all kinds of small boats and never got sick while boating on coastal waters. \u00a0 On my first research cruise while in graduate school I was violently sick before the ship had left sight of land. \u00a0 The roll and pitch of a of a larger vessel is very different than the motion of a small boat. \u00a0For me the motion of the ship is like riding backwards in jump seat of an old station wagon while reading a book with small type. \u00a0My eyes go one way, my ears go another, and lunch always comes up. \u00a0 \u00a0I get really sick at sea and stay sick for many days. \u00a0 \u00a0This is unacceptable when you have science to do and your shipmates are counting on you to do your share of the work. \u00a0Fortunately, there is a solution to seasickness.<\/p>\n

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Promethazime<\/p><\/div>\n

I have tried the over the over-the-counter medications Dramamine (dimenhydrinate<\/a>),\u00a0Bonine\/Antivert (meclozine<\/a>) and the\u00a0Scopolamine<\/a> patches. \u00a0They help a bit, but generally give me copper mouth in addition to sea-sickness. \u00a0Rodney Powell at LUMCOM recommended the “Coast Guard Cocktail” as his solution to sea-sickness. \u00a0 The cocktail is a combination of 25 mg of promethazine, which has effective anti-motion-sickeness and sedative properties, and 25 mg of ephedrine, that acts as a stimulant. \u00a0In the United States both compounds are only available by prescription. \u00a0 \u00a0If you search the web for the Coast Guard Cocktail you find a number of contradictory opinions on the effectiveness of this treatment. \u00a0As I was getting ready for this cruise I learned that the Staples store manager in Waterville, Maine was a corpsman in the Coast Guard. \u00a0He confirmed that the cocktail was the standard treatment for sea-sick sailors on his boats.<\/p>\n

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Ephedrin<\/p><\/div>\n

My personal experience is that the cocktail works as evidenced by this blog post from the Melville in over 10 foot seas. \u00a0I only take the cocktail at the beginning of the cruise and when the seas get really rough, which may be more often than we would like on this trip. \u00a0 For me, the “Coast Guard Cocktail” is a good example of better living through chemistry and pharmaceutical science.<\/p>\n

So far the seasickness “head count” is two, and both \u00a0Annie and I haven’t gotten sick! Time will tell how we fare when the ship travels south into the really rough waters of the Southern Ocean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every time I go to sea I am reminded that I get very, very sea-sick. \u00a0As child I grew up on all kinds of small boats and never got sick while boating on coastal waters. \u00a0 On my first research … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17554,17550,17553],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colbyatsea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}