Comments on: Recurring hiccups

Question: Recurring hiccups

kirstin — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:04:27 -0800

My husband got quite tipsy last night and has suffered from recurring hiccups all day today. The conventional cures work temporarily, but the hiccups only come back a couple of hours later. Can we excise the demons once and for all?

By: ryanhealy

ryanhealy — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:15:25 -0800

This has always worked for me:

Lay flat on your back on a bed or a table allowing roughly the top half of your body to hang off the edge. Lay there for 30 seconds and then attempt to take a sip of water. Repeat as necessary. And feel free to laugh your ass off.

By: scruss

scruss — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:26:52 -0800

I find trying to go for the biggest hiccup ever makes 'em go away, usually. You've got to keep it up for about half a minute.

By: caddis

caddis — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:29:02 -0800

Perhaps he should have a few beers.

As for hiccups, drinking out of the opposite side of a glass, not the side facing your lips, the other side, has usually worked for me. I don't know why. Who knows whether it works for this kind of hiccups.

Get him a beer.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:07:19 -0800

I've had this before, they last on and off for a whole day. It stops being funny when it starts to hurt. I think all you can do is ride them out.

By: lackutrol

lackutrol — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:15:29 -0800

Take a teaspoon full of sugar and put several dashes of bitters on it. Have him put the mixture on his tongue and let it dissolve there (no immediate swallowing). Works for me, anyway.

Also the scare cure, but I've had to go to extreme measures to make that work on other people. Not worth it.

By: curbstop

curbstop — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:16:57 -0800

Try drinking some citrus juice. It sounds a bit funny but it seems to work - and for some reason it only requires a small amount.

By: Jeanne

Jeanne — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:28:02 -0800

There's a thread on Making Light where someone explained the medical cause of hiccups and the cure:

(direct link to the comment. Excerpting, as it's quite long.)

(Part 1:) Juli got this one right. Take a large spoonful of sugar, dry, in the mouth, and let it dissolve. Some of the sugar gets absorbed directly through the buccal membrane of the mouth. The acidosis is kicked way further along, and your body, distracted by the sudden extreme change in the blood chemistry, "calls off" the hiccups as ineffective. It calls them off right away, too: within seconds. The "spoonful of sugar" approach, in my experience, works for about 60% of hiccuppers.

If this doesn't work, the hiccuper has a worse case of acidosis than mere sugar can deal with. So we take the intervention up a notch.

(Part 2:) Take one small spoonful of salt (the equivalent of a cooking teaspoon is plenty). Again, hold in the mouth and let it dissolve. It's gross, but in the next 20% of hiccupers, the hiccups will stop. Bang, right away.

If neither of these steps work, then your hiccuper is not in acidosis, but in alkalosis. So you switch tactics.

(Part 3:) Give the hiccuper a lemon slice and tell them to chew on it. Their hiccups will then vanish.

It is important to do these things *in order* and not try to cut back on the amounts of sugar and salt, or the intervention may fail and you'll wind up having to do it all over again, which is annoying, especially if you're on a low-sodium diet or just don't feel like retaining liters and liters of water the next day. But if you follow these instructions faithfully, the hiccups should vanish, pretty much without fail. You can get a real reputation as a miracle worker with this.

By: bibliowench

bibliowench — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:28:31 -0800

This trick always works for me, but be careful if you try it: hold a pillow over your husband's face until he gestures for you to remove it. He should try and hold out for as long as he can. Obviously, if he goes limp, remove the pillow (I never had that problem).

Another good cure, albeit less dramatic, is to place you hands on each side of his head, over his ears, and squeeze while he drinks a glass of water.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:39:06 -0800

Having a breath-holding contest has always worked for me; barring that, sitting straight upright and drinking something that makes you burp a lot works really well.

By: Slack-a-gogo

Slack-a-gogo — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:42:47 -0800

I'm a firm believer of the seven sips. Take seven small sips of water quickly. I'm not sure why, but it usually works for me and also for the people I suggest it to. And it's less ridiculous than most other methods I've heard of.

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:01:27 -0800

My personal cure is to get a nice big scoop of peanut butter and put it on the roof of your mouth and lick it off. Works every time, and is also delicious.

By: muddgirl

muddgirl — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:13:01 -0800

I suffer from horrible hiccups from time to time - drinking backwards out of a glass of water is trivial for me.

Basically, all non-chemical forms of getting rid of hiccups involve distracting yourself from the hiccups - these include doing something you don't normally do (drinking out of the back of a water glass). My sure-fire method for a while was to time my hiccups - get a clock and start counting the seconds between hiccups, concentrating on predicting the next hiccup - the most important part is the concentrating. When that stopped working, I started consciously over-exaggerating my hiccups - concentrate on predicting the next hiccup and "burping it out".

Jeanne - I'll have to try that next time, although I suspect that it's just another form of "concentrating on something else".

By: muddgirl

muddgirl — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:14:02 -0800

(as for the sure-fire chemical methods, beer and marijuana may work as well as any other muscle relaxant).

By: sian

sian — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:34:12 -0800

I don't know why this works, but I've been doing it ever since elementary school to get rid of hiccups. Get some liquid--water, soda, whatever--and take ten sips right in a row, without taking a breath.

By: abcde

abcde — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:28:51 -0800

Drinking water (around 20 sips) upside down has a very high success rate for me; between the holding breath, the muscle action, and the pressure on your diaphragm it works. If you can't get rid of them, holding the back of my throat open, turning it into more of a gasp than a hic, stops them from being painful.

By: kosher_jenny

kosher_jenny — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 01:41:19 -0800

Tear a small corner of newspaper off a drop it in a glass of water. Drink the water, and avoid swallowing the bit of paper. Works every time with me.

I swore that I read this in Parade a few years ago, but I'm the only one who remembers it. No idea why it works, but it always does.

By: prentiz

prentiz — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 01:43:15 -0800

A friend of mine insists on administering his hiccup cure whenever he catches anyone hiccuping in his presence. Unfortunately his cure is to unexpectedly punch you in the solar plexus hard. Whilst this hurts like a bitch, when you recover, the hiccups have miraculously gone. I am not a doctor - this probably isn't the best of ideas!

By: urbanwhaleshark

urbanwhaleshark — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 02:22:02 -0800

A teaspoon of malt vinegar. Seriously works every time for me. Apparently (whether or not this is true, i haven't looked), hiccups are an alkaline reaction, the acid in the vinegar neutralises it. Probably.

By: unrepentanthippie

unrepentanthippie — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 05:31:27 -0800

Breathe in and out of a paper bag, or plastic if you are not alone. It raises the carbon dioxide levels in the blood, which would actually change your blood chemistry.
You get more carbon dioxide with plastic, but probably shouldn't do that if you are alone in the room, just in case.

By: mdn

mdn — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 06:03:01 -0800

The world record for hiccuping is nearly 70 years [scroll down - other trivia too], so, uh, I'm not sure anything is a guaranteed cure :).
It's apparently not so uncommon for them to last a day or two, though, & they'll (most likely) go away on their own at some point.

By: evil holiday magic

evil holiday magic — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 06:08:01 -0800

Here's a method my parents swear by (please excuse my layman terminology):

Locate the divot at the top of your collar bone, below your throat. The idea is to press your finger in, and 'behind' your collar bone. Hold this a short while, and slowly release. It's based in some sort of accupressure.

I've never gotten this to work, personally. My method is this:

Locate the ridge in your lower jaw, between the teeth and the saliva ducts. Press your tongue to this spot, and breathe deeply for a minute. You might feel the urge to yawn.

Oh, and when you let go you might gleek uncontrollably. Just a heads up on that.

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 06:16:22 -0800

I find imagining my diaphragm in detail and telling it to calm down works. If you need to, go look up anatomy pictures online to help you visualize what is wrong. Understand the hiccup, and then conquer it. It works, I swear.

By: maniactown

maniactown — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 06:53:30 -0800

Gaviscon® FSR: an antacid that fills your stomach up with soothing foam and can quiet the hangover hiccup beast.

By: xammerboy

xammerboy — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 07:04:12 -0800

Eat a couple slices of lemon with sugar on them. This WORKS.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 07:52:38 -0800

Husband here. They indeed lasted throughout the day and evening, but disappeared shortly after mrs. saucy posted the question. Go figure. Drinking a can of soda and challenging the wife to a burping contest did the trick the second time, and I'm free and clear.

thanks all.