How to Stop Vomiting

Vomiting occurs on account of lots of reasons, such as, due to overeating and indigestion, side effect of a medicine, motion sickness, pregnancy in women or even due to intake of alcohol in excess by a person. Whatever be the reason for vomiting to occur, it is certainly not something anybody would like to experience, as continuous vomiting can completely dehydrate a person, spoil the taste of his mouth, and make him weak, especially if it's a child. That's why, it is always helpful if one is aware of some home remedies to prevent and stop vomiting.

How to Prevent Vomiting?

As prevention is always better than cure, so there are a lot of measures that can be taken to prevent vomiting and dizziness from occurring. For example, if vomiting has been caused due to motion sickness, the person suffering from it should avoid looking out from the side windows while sitting in a vehicle. Instead, he should look only at the front windshield.

A pregnant woman often experiences nausea and vomiting during the mornings. An effective tip here for a pregnant woman would be to not get up from her bed immediately upon waking in the mornings. She can also keep a snack ready by her bedside, and have the breakfast in bed only. Doing pregnancy exercises helps in improving digestion and body metabolism, thereby reducing nausea and vomiting, so this is another thing that a pregnant woman can undertake. Eating foods such as crackers, banana and rusks also helps.

As for preventing vomiting after taking alcohol, chewing on raw ginger or drinking a ginger beer or ginger tea can prove to be very effective. Also, snacking in between drinks, helps in preventing vomiting after drinking too.

How to Stop Vomiting?

If a person is vomiting continuously, then it is suggested that he should be made to sit or stand at one place, and not allowed to move. It has been proved that movement and exertion can worsen the feeling of nausea and cause vomiting.

In between the bouts of vomiting, it is very important that the person is not given any kind of solid food as the person will not be able to digest it anyway. Instead, he should be given lukewarm water to sip from time to time. If a sports drink is available, that can be given too. An effective home remedy to stop vomiting is to prepare a mixture with one teaspoon each of mint juice, ginger juice, lemon juice and honey. Give this to the person to sip on slowly and it will surely make him feel better. Or alternately, give the person who is feeling nauseated, a teaspoon of onion juice, after every hour. This will help in stopping vomiting too.

As far as medication for stopping vomiting is concerned, go in for ginger tablets. Prochlorperazine, such as Compazine and Stemzine, can prove to be very effective too. On the other hand, if the person or child who is experiencing vomiting is on some sort of medication or drugs, a great possibility is that the vomiting has occurred because the medicine has not suited him. So, to stop vomiting in such a case, it is suggested that the said medication should be discontinued and a doctor should be consulted for a replacement of the same.

Steps to be Taken after Vomiting

When a person vomits, it results in the loss of lots of fluids from the body. So, in order to make up for this loss and also to avoid dehydration, it is very important the person is given lots of liquids. However, caution must be taken when choosing the liquids to be given as heavy fluids such as milk put lots of pressure on the digestive system. This can aggravate the condition of the person even more, resulting in another bout of vomiting. So, in order to avoid that, fluids such as plain water, herbal teas like green tea, mint tea, chamomile tea, and clear soups should be given.

If the vomiting has occurred for one whole day or if the person has suffered an attack of diarrhea, along with vomiting, then it could lead to acute shortage of fluids in the body. In such a scenario, oral rehydration solution should be given to the person, along with the other liquids.

A person should be kept on liquid diet for a while after vomiting. Once he is able to digest the liquids properly, and is no more experiencing vomiting, he can be given light solid foods such as crackers, rice in a soup form, vegetable soups, and certain fruit juices like apple juice. Going out and enjoying the fresh air will help him feel better too.

The above mentioned tips are quite useful in preventing, stopping, and minimizing the effects of vomiting. However, if the vomiting in a person refuses to come to an end, i.e. it continues for more than a day in adults and for more than half a day in children, and is accompanied by severe dehydration, sunken eyes, rapid heartbeat and a high fever, the person should be taken to a doctor immediately, without any delay.