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Science

Hic Hic Hooray: Hiccups Explained 421

Posted by chrisd from the don't-gulp-your-food dept.
Anonymous Hero writes "Finally after millions of years (and zillions of hiccups) New Scientist gives us an explanation for this most annoying and least obvious of adaptations!"
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Hic Hic Hooray: Hiccups Explained More

Hic Hic Hooray: Hiccups Explained

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  • ...try being taken seriously at work when you have the hiccups...
    • ...try being taken seriously at work when you have the hiccups...

      There is a trick to making them go away. It takes some concentration, but you can consciously prevent your muscles from doing that to you. I wish I knew how to explain it - it's like teaching someone to burp on command - I just "know" how to do it, but I'm not sure how to explain what to do.

      • Re:I always feel like a little kid when I get them (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ebh ( 116526 ) <ed&horch,org> on Thursday February 06, 2003 @10:08AM (#5240538) Journal
        This has only failed me once in the last ten years. YMMV.

        1. Get a glass of water.
        2. Take a deep breath and let it out, but don't push it out. Don't worry if you hiccup during that breath.
        3. Without taking another breath, start taking *tiny* sips of the water; try to take at least one per second. Swallow each one. Keep your epiglottis closed as much as you can, in case you hiccup in the middle of doing this.
        4. After 10-15 sips, the muscles in your mouth and throat will start to get tired, making it more difficult to do this. Keep going.
        5. After a few more sips you won't care about the tired muscles, because you'll really REALLY want to breathe. Force yourself to take a couple more sips, then stop drinking and take that breath.

        You should have no more hiccups after this. If you keep hiccuping wait a few minutes and try again. If it doesn't work on the second try, you're screwed. Also, this will not work if the hiccups are from being drunk and it may not work if they're a side-effect of medication.
        • I don't know about the rest of you, but I only get hiccups when I have air trapped in my stomach. I've found there are two ways to get rid of them (for me). Both involve burping. The first is to swallow more air by closing off the windpipe and sucking air into the stomach, which almost immediately causes me to burp and usually takes both the trapped air and the new air I swallowed with it. This is what I've always assumed that my hiccups were trying to make me do, so bully on the article that was posted. The second, which I prefer, is to tense my stomach muscles in such a way that at the next hiccup, the air is forced out of my stomach. Using these techniques, I rarely hiccup more than three times. In fact, the last time I couldn't get rid of them was right after I had my wisdom teeth removed (years ago) and I was still recovering from the effects of whatever valium derivative they used.

      • another remedy (Score:3, Interesting)

        by smartfart ( 215944 )
        I've found that taking a gulp of coca-cola and letting it fizz in my mouth before swallowing usually does the trick. If no carbonated beverage is available, swishing water in my mouth really hard, then swallowing really fast also works.
      • It helps if you've had any relazation training. The best way I've found to describe it is to concentrate on your chest and try to relax the muscles that are unusally tense. It takes some practice to get it right but it usually works.

  • What I want to know (Score:5, Interesting)

    by johndou1 ( 471942 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:20AM (#5240081) Homepage
    Why do I yawn when I see someone else yawn?

    • easy influenced (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
      like people coughing in a theatre, once one person starts the others follow.

      My hypothesis :

      Falling asleep and/or coughing is a dangerous activity with predators around. So when one person coughs and gives the game away it would be prudent to get your coughing over and done with now rather than when it goes quiet again.

      With yawning maybe it's a trigger to take an oxygen blast before it's necessary.

      Will that do?
      • Falling asleep and/or coughing is a dangerous activity with predators around. So when one person coughs and gives the game away it would be prudent to get your coughing over and done with now rather than when it goes quiet again.

        I think it's more likely that when you hear somebody else cough, you concentrate on your own throat and force it to feel itchy so that you need to cough. It's the same process as when you have a broken limb with a cast on it. Everything is just fine until somebody mentions the word 'itch', and all of the sudden you're running for the wire coat hanger. Speaking of coughing, ever notice that when somebody with a scratchy voice talks you constantly have to resist the urge to clear your own throat?

        With yawning maybe it's a trigger to take an oxygen blast before it's necessary.

        Or maybe you psychologically feel like whoever yawned has sucked up a large portion of the oxygen in the air and that perhaps you should hoard some of it before anybody else does the same. :-)

    • If the yawning/coughing are at least partially caused by environmental influences, you are probably sharing that same environment when you see someone else yawn/cough. This shared experience, a dusty room or boring presentation, is probably what increases the odds of you following suit, not necessarily the initial yawn/cough.

    • Re:What I want to know (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:52AM (#5240378)
      A doctor once told me that most yawns (not all) were a sign that you had high levels of C02 building up in your bloodstream. (Thus, it happens more often when you're sleepy and not moving around much) Yawning slowly expels most the gas from your lungs and causes you to deeply inhale, hopefully getting more oxygen than carbon dioxide in the mix.

      Seeing another person yawn triggers the desire in you to yawn for the very real purpose of getting rid of your excess C02 as well. This may be because we know that if one of us is getting sleepy or deprived of oxygen we all are, or if one of us is in a location that is prone to oxygen depletion-- the bottom of a cave or burrow, for example-- then we need to move to an area that is more open to moving air.

      Humans have a lot of responses like this. When one of us gets sick and vomits, anyone else who sees it also feels sick and tries to vomit. The implication being that if one of us has eaten bad, possibly toxic food, the rest of us should try to purge our stomachs before it affects us.

      Try this the next time you're at home with your dog or cat. Yawn widely and deeply in front of your pet. Chances are, you can make your pet yawn. This is an old, *old* mechanism.

      I know I'm yawning just thinking about it.
      • YAAAAAAAAAWN!
      • CO2, definetely. Drive around in traffic with your window open. See how much more often you yawn.
      • Humans have a lot of responses like this. When one of us gets sick and vomits, anyone else who sees it also feels sick and tries to vomit. The implication being that if one of us has eaten bad, possibly toxic food, the rest of us should try to purge our stomachs before it affects us.

        Try this the next time you're at home with your dog or cat. Yawn widely and deeply in front of your pet. Chances are, you can make your pet yawn. This is an old, *old* mechanism.

        Whew! When I first read that, I thought you were recommending vomitting in front of your dog or cat and waiting to see what happens. Might be something fun to try at somebody else's house.

      • Damn you and all your talk of yawning. I've alread yawned 3 times now!!! ARGH!

      • No, no, no (Score:4, Funny)

        by filmsmith ( 608221 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @11:47AM (#5241615)
        When you yawn, you're readjusting the pressure inside your head. It's why your ears pop. When someone else yawns, they've just altered the pressure around your head so now YOU have to calibrate your pressure to match the NEW air pressure.

      • Re:What I want to know (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Verteiron ( 224042 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @12:08PM (#5241780) Homepage
        This is a very, VERY old reflex. My wife keeps bettas (Siamese fighting fish) and I have seen them yawn unmistakably on severel occassions. What's interesting about that is that bettas are surface breathers (which is why you can keep them in tiny bowls), and every time I've seen once of them yawn, they immediately go up for air. They seem to do it especially if they spot each other through the glass and try to attack... BOTH fish will yawn and go up for air afterwards.

        Very odd.

    • Re:What I want to know (Score:3, Informative)

      by mekkab ( 133181 )
      This guy is the man to ask... [umbc.edu]

      but I think the general consensus is that its all about group synchronization.

      Killer whales maintain pod cohesiveness through diving and respiratory synchronization
      (humans may have a vestige of this tendency in contagious yawning...       quoted from What's new in neurofeedback [eegspectrum.com]

      I think yawning is also an important way of telling your companions "Time to GET OUT OF MY HOUSE."
    • Nah, I want to know why some people sneeze when they look at the bright light.

      Every time I come out of the movie theater, I get vampire jokes because they think I'm allergic to the sun.

  • and knowing is half the battle!

  • Short Answer (Score:3, Funny)

    by passthecrackpipe ( 598773 ) <passthecrackpipe.hotmail@com> on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:22AM (#5240102)
    Because basically, we are fish....

    • Re:Short Answer (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sql*kitten ( 1359 )
      Because basically, we are fish....

      I mentioned this article to the recently-pregnant project manager who sits next to me and she said she could feel her baby hiccuping while it was still "in development" and that it is a very strange sensation.
      • While my wife was pregnant with twins, the did a 'fetal stress test' where they use three transducers to monitor Twin a's heart rate, Twin b's heart rate and contractions of the uterus.

        Since the transducers are essentially very selective microphones, over the course of a 45 minute test you could see one or both of the twins hiccuping. It's pretty funny.
    • So let me get this straight...Kevin Costner wasn't really a freak?
    • Fortunately, I've stopped a long episode of hiccuping la st ni ght

  • Explanation? (Score:2, Informative)

    by stevenbdjr ( 539653 )

    I'm sorry, where did that article provide the explanation? I saw theory, but no proven, scientific answer, as the last two paragraphs indicate...

    It is a plausible idea, says Allan Pack, an expert in respiratory neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. "But it's going to be very tough to prove."

    Straus thinks the real test of theory will be to look at the specific neurons that control hiccups and suckling. If the team is right, he says, most of the nerve cells that are active during suckling should also be active when we hiccup.

  • Babies (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dmorin ( 25609 ) <dmorin@gmail . c om> on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:28AM (#5240154) Homepage Journal
    My baby was hiccuping the day she was born. The doctor said that hiccups in babies are very common and not the same frustrating thing they are in adults. On the contrary it's the cutest darned thing since the little darling never stops staring at you all the while hiccuping like a crazy person. (As a new parent you learn to distinguish the cute harmless hiccups from the ..ahem...juicier sounding ones that signify you'd better get yourself a burp cloth in a hurry.)

    The doctor also said that they have no clue why it happens, and that at least one study had shown that if you bring a baby out into bright light they will often start hiccuping. I keep pointing my daughter at the sun, but so far, nuthin. :)

    • Re:Babies (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Innova ( 1669 )
      Our doctor also told us that hiccups are not frustrating and don't bother babies like they do adults. I didn't neccesarily believe this part. Why wouldn't they bother the baby just like they bother adults, does anyone know?

      • Re:Babies (Score:3, Funny)

        by op00to ( 219949 )
        C'mon man! Babies yack on themselves and could care less. Babies are also known to tolerate sitting in shit for a while too. Sounds pretty laid back to me, you think a hiccup is worse than sitting in shit?
      • Our doctor also told us that hiccups are not frustrating and don't bother babies like they do adults.

        Certainly not true for our daughter. When a really tiny baby, hiccups used to make her cry as she had no idea what was happening. Even now (she was one last week) she often gets frustrated with them. Mind you, depending on her mood she can also think they're funny.

        Cheers,
        Ian

    • Photopic sneeze (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LondonLawyer ( 609870 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @10:23AM (#5240715) Journal
      There's a problem for fighter pilots called photopic sneeze which affects them when they are suddenly hit in the eyes with bright sunlight and can cause loss of control at high speeds. Interesting that some guy here mentions a drinking buddy who used to both sneeze and hiccough when out drinking. Wonder how closely these two spasmodic reflexes are linked.
  • The article seems to indicate that this is a concept - something that may have arisen from brainstorming, and may not be backed up by any data at all!!

    This "explanation" is apparently supported by the thinnest of threads in terms of evolutionary history, and hard evidence is not presented to back this claim. This does not stop the Slashdot editors from posting this as "stuff that matters."

    Please let the brainstormers check their ideas with research, show correlation, then causation, then present their findings in a way that can be checked by others.

    This hypothesis, if you can call it that, is not tested and is perhaps not testable.
    Why this reflex motion a) exists at all, and b) why it persists, if it descende from the frog may only be fodder for spectulation.

    Science requires more than mere speculation.

    Phooey.

    Anomaly
    • At least use the correct scientific definition of 'theory.'

      A theory is not a hypothesis. A theory is not just an idea.
      • Now that you've covered what a theory is not, this is what a theory is (courtesy of dictionary.com):

        A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

        It is also:

        An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.

        However, in science, something tends to not be a 'theory' unless has been first tested and not found to be false yet.

    • Re:This is an idea - a theory, for goodness sake! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nanojath ( 265940 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:50AM (#5240368) Homepage Journal
      I think you're being overly hard on the idea proposed in this article and overly optimistic about the function of Slashdot. The point of the article is that this is an interesting hypothesis that fits known facts and eliminates some of the problems of other theories that have been proposed. Although it will be, as one scientist notes, very difficult to prove, the scientists proposing the theory do in fact suggest how they might pursue experimental evidence in support of their hypothesis.


      Does it "matter?" I think this article is fascinating. The suggestion that specific adaptations might persist beyond their usefulness to an organism because they form a foundation for later adaptations raises really interesting questions about how complex neurological behaviors are "built up" in organisms, and research in this territory could lead to a greater understanding of the line between inherited and learned behaviors, and the evolution of neurological response. That's cutting edge.


      Science is indeed more than speculation but science begins with speculation, hypothesis, and theory. When I want hard science news I go to the resources in the scientific community, I read my Chemical and Engineering News magazines. 95 percent of what I read there is so dry and technical it would be pointless to post it on Slashdot.


      "Münchnones, or mesoionic 1,3-oxazolium-5-oxides, are versatile substrates for 1,3-dipolar additions in constructing biologically active heterocycles. They usually are made by multistep synthesis, but now, Bruce A. Arndtsen, an associate professor of chemistry at McGill University, Montreal, and coworkers have come up with an easier way [J. Am. Chem. Soc., 125, 1474 (2003)]."


      That's "real" science reporting. And it is definately more groundbreaking, in the immediate sense, than an article speculating about hiccups. But there is nothing wrong with a "color" science article that makes me think and wonder and dream a little bit about larger issues.

  • Boss: take a look at this code, I don't know how long it's been around, but it must have some use right?

    private class Brain { ...

    try { ...

    } catch(UnknownException e) {
    this.hiccup();
    }
    • ...

      // FIXME: We have no idea what this does,
      // but we're afraid to touch it. It caused
      // an infinite loop in the Eden testing lab.
      // See workaround below. -Adam 1.0 team

      Brain::hiccup()
      {
      while (1)
      {
      // old code. don't touch.
      memcpy(GLOTTIS, 0xff);
      sleep(2000 * (random() + 0.5));

      // FIX added to work around infinite loop
      if (fearLevel() > 0.7)
      break;
      }
      }
  • We'll meet a man who's been hiccupping for over 30 years.

    "!Hic! Kill me. !Hic!"
  • You get hiccups when you've drunk too much.

    These doofus scientists don't even watch TV or go to the pub, obviously. Boffins.

  • Take THAT creationists! (Score:5, Funny)

    by defile ( 1059 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:33AM (#5240205) Homepage Journal

    Score one more for the we came from a puddle of sludge team!

    Not that I wouldn't prefer creation over evolution. Probably wouldn't have hiccups. Thanks a lot, natural selection.

  • More ammunition (Score:5, Funny)

    by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:34AM (#5240211)
    I'll have to show to article to the wife. That way the next time I get the hiccups, she'll understand why I start going for, uh well, if you read the article you'll know.
    • I'll have to show to article to the wife. That way the next time I get the hiccups, she'll understand why I start going for, uh well, if you read the article you'll know.

      Researchers have also confirmed that doing that prevents hiccups.

      Of course, that is what I am going to tell my wife. You know, she gets hiccups often. Maybe she should have a friend or two come over...

  • Suffer the little children (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kongstad ( 28720 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:34AM (#5240212) Homepage
    Have you ever noticed hiccups in babies.

    My brothers just had a little girl. She quite a noisemaker - Cries almost all the time. Now I've noticed that sometimes in her rare quiet periods when she gets hickups - she doen't seem to care.

    Now this is a child that uses high screaming as the first symptom of hunger, or any othe discomfort - but when she has hickups she doesnt seem to notice. She'll just go on watching our faces - or whatever little people does for fun. This is even though every hickup makes her little body jump.

    While not even resembling proof for anything - it might suggest that the theory that suckling and hickups are related behaviour is not that far of.

    I get the worst hickups myself. My little 100kg 190 cm body, shakes in cramps an my head and throat aches - and they last for a long time. We once threw a dinner party - and I had the hickups all through dinner - quite conversationkiller :)

  • Knowing why and how it happens is good, but what about healing hiccup?
    For most of us, hiccups are just a small annoyance for a couple of minutes, but I remember watching a medical TV emission where people explained that they suffered from chronical hiccups. These persons could have hiccups for several days (night and day), and their life was not funny at all.

    JB.
    • Bloody good question - anyone out there got any good fool-proof methods for curing hiccups? Usual hiccups are OK, even if they last half an hour, but those really annoying ones that actually cause pain - they're the ones I want to know how to get rid of.

      It's really strange - the only way I seem to be able to get rid of hiccups is to forget that I have them. Unfortunately it's bloody impossible to actively try and forget that you have them!

  • But... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by esconsult1 ( 203878 )
    The article doesn't say why one would outgrow hiccupping.

    For some reason I stopped when I was 12 or so, never had any since. I think these scientists are going off a hunch.

  • If Only... (Score:5, Funny)

    by stungod ( 137601 ) <scott@@@globalspynetwork...com> on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:39AM (#5240261) Journal
    If only I had known this in elementary school. It would have saved me from detention.

    Remember how all of the school health books had a little blurb on hiccups? The Q&A form went like this:

    Q: What causes hiccups?
    A: Hiccups are a spastic contraction of the diaphragm combined with the closing of the windpipe. Drink some water...

    I got in trouble for not accepting that. The teacher gave the class the same answer and I told him: "OK, so that's what they are, but WHY do we get them?" Same answer again. So I explained to the teacher and the class the difference between cause and effect.

    2 hours after school...oh, the trauma! Freakin' great way to foster a sense of inquiry.
    • Reminds me of math class in 4th grade. Mrs. Rogers was under the impression that kilometers were longer than miles (because meters are longer than yards...). It took my 4th grade brain nearly all period to explain why those ~4 inches per meter don't make up for 760 yards.

      Ah well,
      -l
    • I'm glad I've only had teachers who accept they are wrong. Just yesterday, an AP Physics teacher gave this question on a test:

      Compressing a gas increases its temperature because -
      A. Increased number of intermolecular collisions
      B. Atoms bounce off of the compressing piston with more energy than they had before
      (3 filler options)

      Anyway, it took me fifteen minutes to explain to her that even if collisions were perfectly elastic, they couldn't give the molecules more average kinetic energy than they started with (6th grade conservation of energy!). She thought choice A was the answer while she was setting the paper!
  • When I read the title, I thought maybe Taco was going to explain why Slashdot has been as stable as a Windows 3.1 box on a Packard Bell for the last few weeks.
  • I pigeonhole spicy food into five personal categories, with examples: mild (Korma), hot (Madras), hiccups (the hotter types of Indonesian Tom Yam), painfully fiery (Vindaloo), and too hot for me (Tindaloo and hotter).

    I'm prepared to accept the possibility of ancestry shared with fish, but I've never heard of fish eating curries ... :-)

  • It's All Mental (Score:2, Interesting)

    by GS11_Pus ( 578643 )

    I have this argument with my significant other all the time. She gets hiccups fairly regularly - perhaps once a month. I haven't had the hiccups in over 15 years.

    When I was young, I remember reading an article that suggested hiccups were purely psychological. Since then, I've been convinced that it was purely a matter of will.

    Occasionally I'll get a single hiccup - usually after drinking a carbonated beverage of some variety. But I know that hiccups are psychological, and I never have a second hiccup. As I said, this has worked for over 15 years.

    My significant other? She swears that it's some biological function. Her hiccups? They last for at least five minutes - sometimes up to half an hour.

    Call me crazy, but at least I'm hiccup-free.

    • Re:It's All Mental (Score:5, Funny)

      by SuiteSisterMary ( 123932 ) <{slebrun} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday February 06, 2003 @10:09AM (#5240551) Journal

      Tonight, we'll interview a man who's had the hiccups for 27 years!

      *cut to clip from interview*
      *hic* Kill me. *hic* Kill me. *hic* Kill me. *hic* Kill me.

    • Agreed. I can do the same trick, stopping after one. I used to have to really fight to stop them but after some practice I find that the hiccup stops itsself... it's like a reflex now.

      I've stopped other people by looking them in the eye and saying "YOU DO NOT HAVE THE HICCUPS" in the most commanding voice I can muster.

      There's another post in this thread that suggests that their may be 'interfaces' to biological functions that aren't apparent to their owners. I have an example of this: ear wiggling. I don't know how to wiggle my ears on command, but now and then a high-pitched sound will startle me and I'll feel my ears pull back on their own. This would probably be a more useful function if humans had more directional ears, but it's a nice try anyway. It's obvious to me that this is the muscle needed to initiate novelty ear wiggling... I just haven't found a way to make it happen at will.

  • Explanation? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rasteri ( 634956 )
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but the article seems to be a bunch of speculation.

  • Chronic Hiccups (Score:2, Insightful)

    by stixman ( 119688 )
    It would be great if this research could help bring an end to Chronic Hiccups [saint-lukes.org], a condition in some people which lasts for hours, days, or, in extreme cases, indefinitely, as a result of various illnesses of the lower abdomen. This could help afflicted people return to a normal lifestyle and regain their social life.

  • nohup (Score:5, Funny)

    by Root Down ( 208740 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:53AM (#5240385) Homepage
    UNIX can prevent hiccups in the first place with the nohup command.

    nohup whoami

    "UNIX: It sure beats drinking a glass of water while standing on your head!"
  • Ha, now instead of holding my breath, jumping up and down, drinking water, etc to get rid of hickups, I can just ask the closest female to let me suckle :)
  • Of course, if you *don't* believe in evolution, this pretty much doesn't explain anything.
    • Of course, if you *don't* believe in evolution, this pretty much doesn't explain anything

      Not necessarily true. I dont believe in "evolution" but see enough evidence of natural selection to believe in that small part of the theory. If it does have something to do with breathing in the womb, for instance, then I would imagine those who do not carry the trait wouldnt make it out very well.

      Add to that the fact that humans are occasionally born with gills to this day, and it begins to make more sense.

      Having said that, I have no real issue with natural selection.. my issue is with the lightning whacking an amino acid once and everything here springing from that.

      (I am one of those wonky creationists who believe that evolution and creation are not necessarily mutually exclusive.. who is to say things werent "created" and then left to their own devices?)

      Maeryk
    • Explanation for those who don't believe in evolution: God did it.

      Feel better now?
  • Will this lead to a cure? The article, which I read for once, doesn't say...

    Check the Guinness book of world records... there's a guy who has had the hiccups for 60 years or so... Oh, the poor soul. C'mon scientists, he's waiting on you! ;)

  • First off, from the subject line, no, this is not a post about how getting the hiccups during a job interview can kill your hopes and dreams.

    From the article: another (theory is) that they prevent amniotic fluid entering the lungs (of babies). If their purpose is to prevent liquid getting into the lungs, points out Christian Straus at Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, you would expect the closure of the glottis to be associated with the contraction of the muscles used for breathing out, as in a cough, not those for breathing in.

    Would someone like to explain to Mr. Straus that there is a greater chance of aspirating amniotic fluid when one is breathing in, than when one is breathing out!?!
    • Granted it's a poorly worded sentence, but his point is that when you hiccup the muscles contract in the same manner as when you are inhaling. In other words you start to inhale, and your muscles suddenly contract all the way. If the action were designed to prevent the entrance of fluid into the lungs you would expect the muscles to contract the other way as in a cough.
  • Many cures for hiccups involve a contraction of the diaphragm and stomach muscles - scaring, drinking water, holding breath. As a kid, that led me to invent my own cure, which always works for me.

    I theorized that, like blinking, sneezing or coughing, a hiccup was trying to clear some sort of irritating blockage. So I tried manually pressing in and slightly up just on and below the breastbone while trying to burp - basically adding a bit more strength and persistence to the action of the diaphragm. Now it may just be me - but when I've been hiccuping, this always causes a sort of foamy burp, and the hiccups end.

    Now it could just be that the diaphragm gets stretched a bit and stops contracting (like stretching a cramping muscle). But my theory has always been that some foam has built up and feels like a blockage to the stomach. It wouldn't show up on any medical imaging, so it isn't surprising that it wouldn't have been detected. And since hiccups are commonly associated with eating or drinking too fast or drinking fizzy drinks - getting air into your stomach, it doesn't seem TOO improbable.

    Anyhow - call it wacky if you want, but my hiccup cure has never failed me.
  • ... how do I get rid of them? And why aren't hiccups painful for children, but painful for many adults? And why do I get them after I've eaten too fast, but not after I've drank too fast?

    If it turns out that this theory is correct, how will it help us get rid of them?

    I'm so disappointed that it appears that the only point of the article/theory is to try and explain hiccups in utero.
  • OK, of course the real question we all have is how the hell do you get rid of them? Well, I'll tell you. At the risk of incurring aspersions from the little jonnie scientists among us, I now share with you my secret cure:

    Hold a paper towel tightly over a glass of water and drink the water through the towel.

    There you have it. One of the world's most vexing problems solved by a doofus on /.

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