I work on boats on the weekends, and one of the things I’ve noticed is that passengers who are very seasick will quite literally turn green. This past Saturday there was one person who I could tell was going to be very sick even before we got outside the Golden Gate Bridge - he developed green coloration around his eyes, which later spread to encompass his whole face, and I’m not just talking about a light green tinge - a very distinctive evil green color develops.
Why does this happen? What happens to a person’s circulation? Why don’t they just turn white?
I always thought seasick people were merely portrayed with green faces in cartoons and such. But, after hearing your account, I find this very strange.
Good point. Was the green turning person in question someone with an olive complexion? I could see olive going pale looking as perhaps a greenish tint.
No, definitely not. He was very caucasian (er, if someone can be be described as “very” caucasian ). No, people turn a very distinctive color - particularly around the eyes, at the cheekbones, and sometimes the forehead. It’s not as though their face is uniformly green - but there is certainly a green color there. I guess it could be described as a sort of yellowish green - not the shade of grass or pine trees or mohitos.
I wish I could link to a picture, but I don’t think people who are seasick would be very receptive to posing for photos, even in the name of science .
I turn white when I’m getting that clammy-skinned, Oh-Gawd-I’m-About-to-Throw-Up feeling. Once, when I started feeling that way at a Donna Summer concert (I blame low blood sugar), my sister grabbed me and started yelling, “monstro is white!! monstro is WHITE!!”
I don’t see how you caucasians make it to adulthood.
I worked on charter fishing boats for a couple of summers and saw more seasick folks than I care to remember. I don’t recall any of them turning green though, most would become extremely pale. Fairer skinned people would develop a blue hue around the eyes and mouth. The lips and tongue of darker people would turn pinkish white. I use to have a picture of Maureen McCormick, Marcia of Brady Bunch fame looking a bit blue around the gills. She spent most of the day in the cabin fighting off seasickness, I never did see her barf though.
I have also witnessed someone in this condition; I would call the color blue-green.
Some time ago I was in a class where the teacher was dissecting a cow eyeball. During the procedure, the teacher cut open his finger with the scalpel. The smell of formaldehyde combined with gushing blood and visceral fluid was enough for one guy. His face was mostly white, but parts of it were a color that can only be described as blue-green–very much like the color of a vein (or at least my veins, which to my eyes are as much green as blue).
People suffering from seasickness & other types of nausea often have a reduced blood flow to the face. This will cause them to “turn all white”. (For caucasians, at least.)
This often appears to observers as if they are ‘turning green’, because it is such a contrast with the pinkish skin color we accept as normal. There is a known phenomona in color vision, where if you stare at a bright colored area for a while, then look at a white page, you will see an after-image in the opposite color. (I can’t remember the name for this.) But I think this explains why seasick people seem to turn green.
Another factor might be that seasick people are often near the rail, or even bent over it. Thus the reflected light from the sea would give them a greenish appearance.
I don’t think the phenomenon is adequately explained by either of your suppositions.
Your after-image explanation assumes, implausibly, that observers of the greenish hue were staring at the face of the nauseated person before he or she became nauseated; this is plainly not the case in each of the anecdotes in this thread.
As for the reflection of the sea, I think you’d find that most parts of the ocean do not reflect a greenish hue–and my example takes place in landlocked Colorado.
I think t-bonham is close to the mark. It’s not an “after-image” thing, just a comparision with how people normally look. Green is the complementary colour of red, so it makes sense that if you remove red blood from a person’s flesh, it will look “greener” than usual.
I have observed the same thing - people definitely DO look yellowish-green before they lean over the rail…
Yeah, I’ve seen some people turn white, but others turn distinctly green, which is what I’m puzzled about. Maybe I should try a Google Image search so I can show you what I mean…
That sounds possible - could it happen even without staring at a white surface?
This seems extremely unlikely to me - the person appeared that color while upright and in poor lighting conditions where reflected light off the sea was unlikely.
Also, a Google image searches for ‘seasick face,’ ‘seasick’ and ‘green face,’ I’m not sure if I’ll find anything useful. If anyone has good Google-fu and wants to try it, I would welcome the help.
I was sailing with some friends the other week and one person got pretty sick. She was pale but not green. Fed the fishies, that’s for sure.
I’d never gotten seasick before but when I went down into the cabin and lost sight of the horizon (anything to give me a frame of reference for the motion of the ship) it took maybe 5 minutes for me to feel like I’d better get back on deck RIGHT NOW or I was going to hurl.
Since this is for a flight simulator test, the greenish tinge over water wouldn’t be a factor in the observation. Possible loophole: they might be quoting another source, but I’d think it would be edited for accuracy to the subject.
(Had a minor detour of links where I learned that Charles Darwin was plagued by sea sickness on his voyage on the Beagle)
I observed someone turning a definite green while giving blood in a conference room on the 12th floor of a downtown office building with no waterway in sight. He was already pumping when I got in the chair and at that time he looked whiter than normal, but some minutes later his skin took on an unmistakeable green tint shortly before he passed out. (He recovered fine, BTW.)
). No, people turn a very distinctive color - particularly around the eyes, at the cheekbones, and sometimes the forehead. It’s not as though their face is uniformly green - but there is certainly a green color there. I guess it could be described as a sort of yellowish green - not the shade of grass or pine trees or mohitos.
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