Nausea and Vomiting

What is Nausea and Vomiting?

Nausea and vomiting are common symptoms that can lower quality of life and sometimes signal a serious illness.^[1] Acute nausea and vomiting last up to 7 days, and chronic nausea and vomiting last 4 weeks or longer.^[1]

Common symptoms

The symptom is nausea (a queasy feeling), vomiting, or both. People may also lose their appetite or feel dizzy, and repeated vomiting can lead to dehydration and electrolyte problems.^[1]

Causes and risk factors

Common causes of short-term symptoms include gastroenteritis and other viral illnesses, food poisoning, migraine, vestibular (inner ear) problems, early pregnancy and side effects of medicines.^[1] Chronic symptoms have a wide range of causes, including digestive, infectious, metabolic, neurologic and psychiatric conditions, as well as medicines and toxins.^[1]

Chemotherapy and surgery with general anesthesia are well-known triggers. Up to 80 percent of patients can be affected by nausea and vomiting after surgery.^[2]

How it is diagnosed and treated conventionally

A careful history is the main tool: when symptoms started, how long they last, what makes them better or worse, medicines and substances used, and any warning symptoms.^[1] Without alarm symptoms, short-term nausea and vomiting are usually treated symptomatically without extensive testing.^[1]

Treatment includes replacing fluids and electrolytes, small frequent meals and avoiding trigger foods. Antiemetic medicines reduce acute symptoms well, but chronic symptoms are often harder to treat, and these medicines should be used for the shortest time needed.^[1] Chronic unexplained nausea and vomiting can seriously affect quality of life, and drugs may not control it in some patients.^[3]

Why Nausea and Vomiting calls for a whole-person approach

Nausea and vomiting are not one condition. The same symptom can come from the stomach, the brain, the inner ear, a medicine or a metabolic problem, so the cause needs to be identified by a physician first.^[1]

Supportive care is aimed at how a person feels while the cause is found and treated. It does not replace that evaluation.

Finding the underlying cause

Gastrointestinal, infectious, metabolic, neurologic and psychiatric disorders and medications can all cause chronic symptoms.^[1] This is why new or persistent symptoms need medical assessment before any complementary approach is tried.

Hydration and eating

Replacing fluids and electrolytes and eating small, frequent meals are core parts of care.^[1] Anything that makes it harder to keep food or fluids down matters most.

Treatment-related nausea

Cancer treatment and surgery are common triggers. About 80 percent of patients may be affected by nausea or vomiting after anesthesia and surgery.^[2] Prevention with antiemetic drugs is the standard approach, and high-certainty evidence supports several of them.^[2]

Quality of life when symptoms last

Long-lasting nausea can reduce quality of life and lead to repeated hospital visits, particularly when no cause is found.^[3] Complementary options are part of the broader set of approaches reviewed for these patients.^[3]

Acupuncture for Nausea and Vomiting

What the research shows

Acupuncture has been studied mostly for nausea and vomiting from specific causes, and the evidence is moderate at best, with low-certainty results. A meta-analysis of 38 trials (2,503 patients) of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting found that acupuncture added to usual care may increase complete control of acute and delayed vomiting, but the certainty was low or very low and there was no effect on other outcomes.^[4] A separate analysis of 11 English-language trials from a systematic review of acupuncture for chemotherapy-induced nausea found that selective outcome reporting was a concern.^[5] Even so, a guideline from the Society for Integrative Oncology recommended acupressure and acupuncture for reducing chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting in breast cancer care.^[6]

For nausea after surgery, a 2024 systematic review of nonpharmacological nursing interventions found that acupuncture, ginger and aromatherapy reduced nausea and vomiting.^[7] In a 2026 trial of 232 women in China with moderate to severe nausea after surgery, a wristband delivering electrical stimulation at the PC6 point relieved symptoms in more patients at 2 hours than an intravenous antinausea drug (78% vs 55%).^[8] That device is not needle acupuncture, and the trial needs repeating elsewhere.

In pregnancy, a 2024 meta-analysis of 24 trials (2,390 women) found acupuncture plus medication worked better than medication alone, with evidence of moderate to very low certainty.^[9] Nausea in pregnancy should be managed with your obstetric care provider.

We found no strong trials of acupuncture for chronic nausea of unknown cause.

How acupuncture may work

The research on mechanisms in nausea is limited, and an explanation is not yet established. The studies above most often used the Neiguan (PC6) point on the inner forearm, along with ST36 and CV12 in pregnancy trials.^[9] Why stimulating this point might reduce nausea remains uncertain.

What treatment involves

Treatment uses fine, sterile, single-use needles, often at the inner forearm, the lower leg and the abdomen, usually left in place for about 20 to 40 minutes. Acupressure at the wrist is also used. A course is several visits, with reassessment along the way.

Serious problems from acupuncture are rare. In prospective studies, about 9 in 100 patients had a minor reaction such as bleeding, soreness or redness at a needle site, and serious events occurred in about 1 in 10,000 patients.^[10] Tell the practitioner first if you have a bleeding disorder, take blood thinners, are pregnant, or have a pacemaker (relevant to electroacupuncture). If you are vomiting repeatedly or cannot keep fluids down, you need medical care before acupuncture.

Ayurvedic medicine for Nausea and Vomiting

The Ayurvedic view

Ayurveda describes nausea and vomiting as Chhardi, a disturbance linked to aggravated doshas and weak digestive fire (agni). In this traditional framework the dosha involved guides treatment. These are traditional categories, not biomedical diagnoses.

Therapies that may be used

Care is chosen for the individual and traditionally combines:

• Light, easy-to-digest meals at regular times, with warm fluids
• Ginger, cardamom and other kitchen spices traditionally used for digestion
• Calming routines and steady sleep hours

Panchakarma procedures, especially those that cause vomiting or purging, are not appropriate for people who are already vomiting, during pregnancy, acute illness or frailty, or before a physician has found the cause of the symptoms.

What the research shows

We found no clinical trials of Ayurvedic treatment for nausea and vomiting as a condition. Ginger is used in Ayurveda and has been studied in chemotherapy, surgery and pregnancy,^[11] and that evidence is described in the herbal section below, including 35 trials in chemotherapy-induced nausea.^[12] Without trials, the effects of other Ayurvedic therapies on this symptom are unknown.

Herbal medicine for Nausea and Vomiting

Herbs and formulas that have been studied

Ginger (Zingiber officinale) is the most studied herb, as capsules or as ginger-partitioned moxibustion, which is moxibustion applied over a slice of ginger.^[12] Research has looked at ginger in chemotherapy, surgery and pregnancy.^[11]

What the research shows

The evidence is limited and mixed. An overview of 15 meta-analyses concluded that ginger may help chemotherapy-induced and postoperative nausea and vomiting and shows promise in pregnancy, but judged the methodological quality of those meta-analyses as low or critically low.^[11] A meta-analysis of 35 trials found that ginger capsules with standard antiemetics reduced severe acute nausea and high-grade vomiting, and that ginger-partitioned moxibustion reduced vomiting, with calls for more rigorous trials.^[12] A different review of 23 trials found no significant difference in most nausea and vomiting outcomes, apart from fewer episodes of acute vomiting at low daily amounts taken for several days.^[13]

In pregnancy, a meta-analysis found that ginger beat placebo on effective rate and nausea scores but not on vomiting, with low-quality evidence.^[14]

Safety and herb-drug interactions

Ginger has not been linked to liver injury in the LiverTox database, but case reports describe bleeding when warfarin was combined with several herbs, including ginger, garlic, ginkgo, dan shen and ginseng.^{[15, 16]} Anyone taking blood thinners or aspirin needs a practitioner's review before using ginger or other herbs.^[17]

Some herbal products can injure the liver, and about one fifth of Ayurvedic products bought online contained detectable lead, mercury or arsenic.^{[18, 19]} Herbs should come from tested sources and be prescribed individually. Tell us if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are having chemotherapy or surgery, since herbs and supplements should be cleared with your treating team. A herbal preparation applied to the skin (transdermal medication therapy) is also available, but we are not aware of trials of it for nausea.

Translating traditional medicine into modern biological language

The links drawn here are interpretation, not equivalence. Chinese medicine describes nausea and vomiting as stomach qi rising when it should descend, and the PC6 point is traditionally used to bring it down. The studies cited here did not establish how stimulating this point might affect nausea, so no biological equivalent can be claimed.^[9]

Ayurveda's disturbed doshas and weak agni describe queasiness and poor digestion. No study has shown that a dosha corresponds to a specific mechanism of nausea.

How this care fits with your medical care

Complementary care for nausea and vomiting works alongside, not in place of, your physician's evaluation and treatment. Keep taking prescribed antinausea medicines as directed, and do not stop or change them without your prescriber. We do not diagnose the cause of nausea and vomiting.

If your nausea is from chemotherapy, surgery or pregnancy, we ask that your oncology, surgical or obstetric team knows you are receiving complementary care. Please bring your diagnosis, the medicines and supplements you take, and any recent test results.

When to seek urgent medical care

Nausea and vomiting can indicate a life-threatening illness.^[1]

• Vomiting blood or material that looks like coffee grounds
• Severe or sudden abdominal pain, or a rigid abdomen
• Signs of dehydration, such as very dark urine, dizziness on standing, or being unable to keep fluids down
• Severe headache, stiff neck, confusion or a change in vision with vomiting
• Chest pain, or vomiting after a head injury
• Vomiting that lasts more than a day or two, or ongoing symptoms with unintended weight loss

If any of these occur, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department.