By Chester Dawson
For those living in northeastern Japan and Tokyo, nary a day has passed recently without being rattled by an aftershock or two from the destructive March 11 earthquake. While the Japanese archipelago is no stranger to temblors, the power and length of the aftershocks has unnerved many. That includes Tokyo-ites who had grown blasé about the garden variety quakes common before last month’s shake, the biggest in Japan’s recorded history.
The frequency and force of the shaking has led to an epidemic of what’s known in Japanese as jishin-yoi, which literally means “earthquake drunk” in English. What it refers to is a medical condition in which people feel a sense of motion as if in an earthquake—even if there isn’t one. Experts say this phenomenon can be attributed to one of two causes: either a case of balance impairment akin to motion sickness, or a form of earthquake phobia.
Treatment depends on which of the two conditions is diagnosed, according to Dr. Munetaka Ushio of the University of Tokyo Hospital’s department of otolaryngology (specializing in the ears, nose and throat). “An estimated 30% of the population in quake-stricken areas have experienced this,” Dr. Ushio said, adding that general practitioner clinics have seen a large increase in the number of patients who have sought relief from the discomforting sensation. ”Even I have had it recently,” he said.
For most people afflicted, the sense of being unbalanced is temporary, fading away in anywhere from a couple of hours to several days. This condition occurs when there is a neurological “mismatch” between the balance mechanism in the vestibular system of the inner ear and sensory signals from nerves in the eyes and feet. The problem often can be relieved, much like motion sickness, by training one’s eyes on a distant object, laying down or sipping cold or hot liquids, Dr. Ushio said. In more severe cases, patients may be advised to use over-the-counter antihistamines, a.k.a. motion sickness pills, he said.
More serious cases may be triggered by a form of post traumatic stress disorder after a big quake and may linger for weeks or months. To cope with that, patients may be prescribed a form of anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medication, Dr. Ushio said. He added that those who should seek immediate medical counseling include people with symptoms such as falling down, fevers and vomiting—all potential effects of a more common kind of drunkenness, but not associated with post-earthquake hangover.
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