Reasons for morning sickness

Vomiting and morning sickness - NHS

Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, often known as morning sickness, is very common in early pregnancy.

It can affect you at any time of the day or night or you may feel sick all day long.

Morning sickness is unpleasant, and can significantly affect your day-to-day life. But it usually clears up by weeks 16 to 20 of your pregnancy and does not put your baby at any increased risk.

There is a chance of developing a severe form of pregnancy sickness called hyperemesis gravidarum. This can be serious, and there's a chance you may not get enough fluids in your body (dehydration) or not get enough nutrients from your diet (malnourishment). You may need specialist treatment, sometimes in hospital.

Sometimes urinary tract infections (UTIs) can also cause nausea and vomiting. A UTI usually affects the bladder, but can spread to the kidneys.

Non-urgent advice: Call your midwife, GP or 111 if:

you're vomiting and:

have very dark-coloured urine or have not had a pee in more than 8 hours
are unable to keep food or fluids down for 24 hours
feel severely weak, dizzy or faint when standing up
have tummy (abdominal) pain
have a high temperature
vomit blood
have lost weight

Treatments for morning sickness

Unfortunately, there's no hard and fast treatment that will work for everyone’s morning sickness. Every pregnancy will be different.

But there are some changes you can make to your diet and daily life to try to ease the symptoms.

If these do not work for you or you're having more severe symptoms, your doctor or midwife might recommend medicine.

Things you can try yourself

If your morning sickness is not too bad, your GP or midwife will initially recommend you try some lifestyle changes:

get plenty of rest (tiredness can make nausea worse)
avoid foods or smells that make you feel sick
eat something like dry toast or a plain biscuit before you get out of bed
eat small, frequent meals of plain foods that are high in carbohydrate and low in fat (such as bread, rice, crackers and pasta)
eat cold foods rather than hot ones if the smell of hot meals makes you feel sick
drink plenty of fluids, such as water (sipping them little and often may help prevent vomiting)
eat foods or drinks containing ginger – there's some evidence ginger may help reduce nausea and vomiting (check with your pharmacist before taking ginger supplements during pregnancy)
try acupressure – there's some evidence that putting pressure on your wrist, using a special band or bracelet on your forearm, may help relieve the symptoms

Find out more about vitamins and supplements in pregnancy

Anti-sickness medicine

If your nausea and vomiting is severe and does not improve after trying the above lifestyle changes, your GP may recommend a short-term course of an anti-sickness medicine, called an antiemetic, that's safe to use in pregnancy.

Often this will be a type of antihistamine, which are usually used to treat allergies but also work as medicines to stop sickness (antiemetic).

Antiemetics will usually be given as tablets for you to swallow.

But if you cannot keep these down, your doctor may suggest an injection or a type of medicine that's inserted into your bottom (suppository).

See your GP if you'd like to talk about getting anti-sickness medication.

Risk factors for morning sickness

It's thought hormonal changes in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy are probably one of the causes of morning sickness.

But you may be more at risk of it if:

you're having twins or more
you had severe sickness and vomiting in a previous pregnancy
you tend to get motion sickness (for example, car sick)
you have a history of migraine headaches
morning sickness runs in the family
you used to feel sick when taking contraceptives containing oestrogen
it's your first pregnancy
you're obese (your BMI is 30 or more)
you're experiencing stress

Visit the pregnancy sickness support site for tips for you and your partner on dealing with morning sickness.

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Video: how can I cope with morning sickness?

In this video, a midwife gives advice on how to deal with morning sickness during your pregnancy.

Media last reviewed: 27 February 2017
Media review due: 27 March 2020

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Page last reviewed: 13 April 2021
Next review due: 13 April 2024

Morning Sickness: Causes, Treatments, and Prevention

Medically reviewed by Valinda Riggins Nwadike, MD, MPH — By Euna Chi, MD on August 25, 2019

Overview

Morning sickness is a common symptom of pregnancy and is marked by nausea and occasional vomiting. Despite the name, morning sickness can cause discomfort at any time of the day.

Morning sickness usually happens within the first four months of pregnancy and is often the first sign that a woman is pregnant.

There are various ways to alleviate morning sickness, and complications are rare.

Causes of morning sickness

There’s no one cause of morning sickness during pregnancy, and severity varies among women. Increased hormone levels during the first few weeks of pregnancy is among the most common causes. Reduced blood sugar is another common cause of morning sickness.

Other factors can worsen morning sickness. These include:

having twins or triplets
excessive fatigue
emotional stress
frequent traveling

Morning sickness can vary between pregnancies. While you may have had severe morning sickness during one pregnancy, in future pregnancies it may be very mild.

Possible complications of morning sickness

Nausea and vomiting can easily cause a loss of appetite. Many pregnant women worry that this will harm their babies. Mild morning sickness is generally not harmful.

Women who experience morning sickness well beyond the first 3 to 4 months of their pregnancies should speak with their doctor. Also seek help if you aren’t gaining any weight during pregnancy.

Morning sickness is usually not severe enough to hinder fetal growth and development. For some pregnant women, nausea causes them to experience severe vomiting and weight loss.

This condition is called hyperemesis gravidarum. It causes electrolyte imbalances and unintentional weight loss. If left untreated, this condition may eventually harm your baby.

Call your doctor immediately if you experience:

inability to keep food down
weight loss of 2 pounds or more
fever
infrequent urination with small quantities of dark-colored urine
lightheadedness or dizziness
fast heartbeat
severe nausea within the second trimester
blood in your vomit
frequent headaches
abdominal pain
spotting, or bleeding

Severe bouts of morning sickness generally require hospitalization. Hyperemesis gravidarum often requires intravenous (IV) fluids for rehydration.

Treatment for morning sickness

Your doctor may prescribe supplements or medications to alleviate nausea and to help you retain foods and fluids. Medications your doctor may prescribe include:

antihistamines: to help with nausea and motion sickness
phenothiazine: to help calm severe nausea and vomiting
metoclopramide (Reglan): to help the stomach move food into the intestines and help with nausea and vomiting
antacids: to absorb stomach acid and help prevent acid reflux

Do not take these medications on your own without first talking with your doctor.

Some people find that alternative remedies may also help relieve morning sickness. Make sure you only try these after first discussing them with your doctor. These remedies include:

vitamin B-6 supplements
prenatal vitamins
ginger products, including ginger ale, ginger tea, and ginger drops
saltine crackers
acupuncture
hypnosis

Tests for morning sickness

Based on your symptoms, your doctor may order some tests to make sure that you and your baby are safe. These include:

Urine tests

Urine tests can determine whether you’re dehydrated.

Blood chemistry tests

Your doctor may order blood chemistry tests that include:

complete blood count (CBC)
comprehensive metabolic panel
comprehensive metabolic panel (Chem-20), to measure the electrolytes in your blood.

These tests will determine whether you’re:

dehydrated
malnourished, or deficient in certain vitamins
anemic

Ultrasound

Ultrasound uses sound waves to produce images of your baby. The doctor then uses these images and sounds to check that your baby is developing at a healthy rate.

Preventing morning sickness

Taking the following steps may help prevent or minimize nausea:

Drink plenty of water.
Drink water before and after meals.
Take naps.
Ventilate your home and workspace to eliminate scents that make you nauseous.
Avoid spicy foods.
Eat small meals.
Avoid fatty foods.
Take vitamins at night.
Avoid cigarette smoke.

If none of these preventative measures works, or if you experience morning sickness beyond the first 3 to 4 months of your pregnancy, it’s important that you speak with your doctor.

Also, be sure to talk to your doctor before starting any medications or alternative remedies to discuss these options.

Last medically reviewed on August 26, 2019

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Our experts continually monitor the health and wellness space, and we update our articles when new information becomes available.

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Medically reviewed by Valinda Riggins Nwadike, MD, MPH — By Euna Chi, MD on August 25, 2019

Why nausea in the morning on an empty stomach - causes and how to treat at home

Most often, pregnant women face nausea in the morning on an empty stomach, due to intoxication, but it is not uncommon for this problem to occur in males or even children

Do not worry too much if you have encountered such a problem once, it is likely that this is a banal poisoning. But, if nausea in the morning on an empty stomach does not go away, you should immediately consult a doctor. Some people are used to dealing with this problem with folk remedies and medicines and they really get better, but it is worth considering that most likely the disease or pathology itself continues to develop. And as a result, it will turn into a more serious form. That is why it is so important to consult a doctor who will find out the cause of morning sickness and prescribe the most effective treatment.

Possible diseases

Most often, morning sickness on an empty stomach may indicate the presence of the following diseases: unpleasant symptoms. This is due to inflammatory processes in the duodenum 12. The patient can also be tormented by: burning, bloating during and after eating, heartburn.

Inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis) - also characterized by nausea in the morning, as well as after eating fatty or fried foods. This disease is easily confused with gastritis due to the similarity of symptoms, but with pancreatitis, the patient begins to have problems with stools and an unpleasant, bitter taste in the mouth.

Appendicitis - nausea is likely to fade into the background, after unbearable pain in the right side begins to appear.

Inflammation of the gallbladder (cholecystitis) - this disease can also be accompanied by morning nausea. Accompanying symptoms are pain in the right hypochondrium and excessive gas formation.

Other causes of nausea in the morning

After excluding the above diseases from the list of causes, the following causes can be considered:

Pregnancy. Intoxication and nausea in the morning is often found in pregnant women, especially in the early stages. This is a normal reaction of the body to significant changes and hormonal changes. It is very important to completely exclude drugs for the treatment of the digestive tract during pregnancy. These funds can have an extremely negative impact on the health of the patient, the unborn child and the course of pregnancy. Therefore, you will have to endure this ailment and get by with folk remedies, but be sure to consult your doctor.
Migraine. Morning sickness on an empty stomach may precede a severe headache. You will most likely still feel a lot of noise and increased sensitivity to smells.
High blood pressure (hypertension). The problem of morning sickness can be accompanied by headache and dizziness. If you do not pay attention to these symptoms in a timely manner, you risk starting this disease, which in turn can lead to a stroke.
Cardiovascular disease - rarely, nausea on an empty stomach occurs with heart failure or developing myocardial infarction. If nausea is accompanied by pain, a feeling of heaviness and tightness behind the sternum, numbness or tingling in one half of the body, it is necessary to seek medical help as soon as possible, as this may be an incipient myocardial infarction.
Increased intracranial pressure - Nausea and regurgitation in infants can occur when pressure increases inside the ventricles of the brain.

What to do if you feel sick in the morning

It is important to understand that regular morning sickness is a signal of the presence of a pathology or disease and it is highly undesirable to self-medicate. Be sure to consult a doctor for an examination, but if you don’t have such an opportunity at the moment, there are several effective ways that will help reduce or temporarily get rid of this problem:

Medicines. You need to be very careful and you must be sure that morning sickness is not the cause of pregnancy or an intestinal disease.
Ginger root, mint and lemon drinks. You can make infusions of these products for maximum effect, simply by adding them to a glass and boiling water, after 15 minutes you will have a very effective and safe (in the absence of allergies) remedy for morning sickness. YOU can also just add them to hot tea.
Medicinal collection - if nausea relentlessly torments you in the morning, you can try a collection of mint, oak bark and celandine. To prepare the drink, take 1 tsp of mint leaves, dried oak bark and chopped celandine, pour 0.5 l of boiling water and boil in a water bath for 10 minutes. After the broth is cooled and filtered, take 1 tablespoon 3-5 times a day before meals.
During pregnancy. There are some little tricks you can use. For example, do not get out of bed quickly, drink plenty of fluids. Eliminate fatty and heavy foods from your diet. Eat small meals several times a day.

Tired of nausea in the morning? Constantly sick after eating? We understand the reasons!

Why do you feel sick in the morning?
Causes of nausea after eating
How to determine the exact cause of nausea?
What to do if the gastroenterologist did not reveal violations?
Treatment

Nausea, heaviness in the stomach, heartburn are familiar to everyone. I overate on fatty delicacies at the festive table - unpleasant sensations will not be long in coming. I drank expired kefir or too much alcohol - nausea is right there. The reasons are simple and clear. In the first case, there were not enough enzymes to digest food, and the liver had to work at its limit. In the second, toxic substances entered the body, which caused poisoning. These symptoms are unpleasant, but they are temporary. And they usually go away after a few days or even hours. But what if you feel sick all the time? We need to figure out the reasons!

Why do you feel sick in the morning?

Waking up daily in the morning with a feeling of nausea, which causes you to refuse breakfast and take a long time to "come to yourself", may be associated with nocturnal gastroesophageal reflux (reflux of bile into the esophagus). By itself, it is not a pathology, since normally it occurs mainly after eating and does not cause discomfort. The body for its suppression includes compensatory antireflux mechanisms.

But if an unpleasant symptom is observed frequently and lasts for a long time, then we can talk about gastroesophageal reflux disease or diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. MRI of the abdominal cavity will help to find out the exact cause and make a diagnosis.

Causes of nausea after eating

Nausea after breakfast or lunch can be caused by heavy meals (mainly fatty), overeating, psychogenic eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia).

But in most cases, the patient's unpleasant condition is associated with pathologies of the gastrointestinal tract: gastritis, colitis, peptic ulcer, enteritis.

How to determine the exact cause of nausea?

The range of possible violations, as we see, is quite "rich". Nausea can be caused by the liver, gallbladder, biliary tract, pancreas, stomach, small intestine, duodenum, lower esophageal sphincter, and gastroesophageal junction.

Problems can cause inflammation, erosion, ulcers, cysts, tumors, gallstones. The cause may be stenosis (narrowing) of the output section of the stomach, fibrosis, cirrhosis and fatty degeneration of the liver (hepatosis). Often, patients are diagnosed with functional disorders.

Abdominal MRI is recommended to determine the gastrointestinal cause of nausea and rule out a tumor causing dysphagia (food obstruction and stagnation).

A highly informative study allows the patient not to run around the doctors' offices, checking each organ separately. And immediately simulate a three-dimensional image of each organ, see its layered sections. And get an idea of the overall picture: the thickness and changes in the walls of the stomach, the state of the gallbladder, the size of the liver, pancreas, duodenum, esophagus, track their functions in real time. MRI provides better visualization of the gastrointestinal tract than CT, so this method is preferable in most cases.

Examination can be done without and with contrast. In the second case, the cost of abdominal MRI will be higher, but the study will provide more accurate information on tumor neoplasms.

What should I do if the gastroenterologist has not identified any abnormalities?

It also happens that after the examination, the gastroenterologist tells the patient that no pathologies have been detected on his part. However, such joyful news does not yet mean that the person who came with complaints is heroically healthy.

The etiopathogenesis of nausea may be associated with:

vascular pathologies;
hypertension;
diseases of the inner ear;
endocrine disorders;
brain and CNS pathologies;
head injuries and post-traumatic syndromes;
viral, bacterial and parasitic infections (often not associated with the gastrointestinal tract, but affecting the lungs, ENT organs, CNS).

Treatment

Nausea is not a disease, but a symptom of some disorder or disease. Therefore, if it is not associated with toxic poisoning, then you need to look for and eliminate the cause, and not fight the effect.