Hiccups
Hiccups
17 Home-Tested Cures
Hiccuping is a truly useless experience, but most of us did it before we were born and will keep on doing it every now and then for the rest of our lives.
Why? Nobody is really sure. Some scientists believe hiccuping is the last vestige of a primitive reflex that at one time served some useful purpose, but not anymore. What causes it? The explanations are nearly endless, but most experts start their lists of hiccup sins with eating too fast and swallowing too much air. It seems a good place to start.
You probably remember that time you were hiccuping for several minutes and even felt kind of queasy. You think you had it bad? You didn't have it bad. Charles Osborne of Anthon, Iowa, had it bad. Osborne started hiccuping in 1922 and hiccuped for the next 65 years. That's 430 million times!
Hiccup cures date to antiquity and number in the hundreds, perhaps thousands. The general goal of all hiccup cures is to either increase carbon dioxide levels in the blood or to disrupt or overwhelm the nerve impulses causing the hiccups. Do they work? Some physicians say it doesn't really matter—most hiccups stop on their own after a few minutes anyway. Then again, that's probably what they told Charles Osborne. Read on. Maybe one or more of the following will be your sure cure.
Doctor Dubois' surefire sugar cure. "One cure that I find effective is a teaspoon of sugar, swallowed dry," says AndrŽ Dubois, M.D., a gastroenterologist in Bethesda, Maryland. "That quite often stops the hiccups in minutes. The sugar is probably acting in the mouth to modify the nervous impulses that would otherwise tell the muscles in the diaphragm to contract spasmodically," he says.
"I've been using that cure since I was little," says Steve Lally, associate editor for Prevention magazine. "It's never failed me yet." Lally, however, recommends a tablespoon of sugar, but that may be a matter of personal taste. Either way, some doctors seem to think sugar is a surefire cure. (Parents take note: One-half teaspoon of sugar dissolved in 4 ounces of water may work wonders on baby's hiccups.)
The Laundry List The truth must be told. Doctors approach nonpersistent hiccups exactly the same way you do—by running through a list of favorite treatments until they find one that works. Thoughtfully, the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology published a list of suggested hiccup cures to help those doctors whose personal lists were a little weak. Here are the journal's recommendations. - Yank forcefully on the tongue.
- Lift the uvula (that little boxing bag at the back of your mouth) with a spoon.
- Tickle the roof of your mouth with a cotton swab at the point where the hard and soft palate meet.
- Chew and swallow dry bread.
- Suck a lemon wedge soaked with Angostura bitters.
- Compress the chest by pulling the knees up or leaning forward.
- Gargle with water.
- Hold your breath.
Two other treatments that the journal didn't list but that may warrant a try include: - Suck on crushed ice.
- Place an ice bag on the diaphragm just below the rib cage.
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"Mac" McCallum's guaranteed gulp. "I cure my hiccups by filling a glass of water, bending over forward, and drinking the water upside down," says Richard McCallum, M.D., professor of medicine and chief of the Gastroenterology Division at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center. "That always works and I firmly recommend it for my normally healthy patients."
That cure came through for musician Mark Golin, who found himself beset with hiccups after a late-night gig in New York City. "A woman told me to bend over and drink the water from the opposite side of the glass," he says. "It worked then and has worked dozens of times since then."
The Dreisbach deflator. As a hard-driving researcher for a major northeastern publishing company, Christine Dreisbach knows what it's like to work through lunch and sometimes suffer the consequences—a bad bout of hiccups. "I used to try holding my breath," she says, "but lately, I've been blowing air out of my body in a slow, steady stream." Simple as it sounds, "that seems to work for me," she says.
Betty Shaver's sensation swallower. "When you're eating, just be quiet and eat," says Betty Shaver, a lecturer on herbal and other home remedies at the New Age Health Spa in Neversink, New York. "Then you won't get hiccups."
That's probably sage advice, but for those who are already afflicted, Shaver offers this remedy. "Hold your breath for as long as possible and swallow at the time you feel the hiccup sensation coming. Do that two or three times, then take a deep breath and repeat again. That should do it," she says.
That cure has worked wonders for one well-known author who used to get hiccups when forced to read aloud before her elementary school classmates, and who has suffered ceaselessly since then when making public appearances. "I always needed something that would work quickly, because I wouldn't start hiccuping until the kid ahead of me got up to read," she says. "Swallowing is the only thing that got me through the Dick and Jane series."
The half-minute hiccup helper. Dawn Horvath can diagnose digestive disturbances with great dexterity. She's a researcher just like Dreisbach, and that profession seems to know no end of alimentary ailments.
Horvath's helper goes like this: "Fill a Dixie cup with water and place it on the counter, then press your index finger in your ears. Bend over at the waist and pick up the cup with the pinky finger and thumb of each hand and, while holding your breath, drink the water down in one or two gulps."
The tot tickler. When you have a roomful of active kids running around giggling and laughing at the day-care center, you can bet some will end up with hiccups before the day is done.
"I tickle them while they hold their breath, and they try hard not to laugh," says Ronnie Fern, director of the ACJC Day-Care Center in Easton, Pennsylvania. "It works, too," says she. "I suppose it makes you gasp for breath and makes your diaphragm go back to doing what it's supposed to do." Maybe, but it sounds like fun either way.
Pat's brown bagger. We were going to leave out the old tip about breathing into a brown paper bag, figuring everybody probably knew it already and—worse yet—that it never worked very well anyway. But then we started hearing tales about Pat Leayman, a mail clerk for a major firm located in the industrial heartland. Seems she's cured large numbers of hiccuping mail workers (must be something in the stamps) using nothing more than that old brown paper bag!
"It's in the technique," Leayman says, sensing our skepticism. "You have to blow in and out exactly ten times, and you have to do it really hard until you're red in the face. You also have to do it fast, and you have to form a good seal around your mouth with the bag so that no air gets in. If you follow those directions exactly," she says, "the bag will work every time."
PANEL OF ADVISERS
AndrŽ Dubois, M.D., is a gastroenterologist in Bethesda, Maryland.
Ronnie Fern is director of the ACJC Day-Care Center in Easton, Pennyslvania.
Richard McCallum, M.D., is a professor of medicine and chief of the Gastroenterology Division at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center in Charlottesville. He does research on gastrointestinal problems.
Betty Shaver is a lecturer on herbal and other home remedies at the New Age Health Spa in Neversink, New York.
