I’ve tried many things before, but in the past couple days I’ve found that eating a packet or two of mustard tends to get rid of hiccups.
What sort of tricks do you folks have?
Say this out loud:
“I am not a fish.”
Repeat as necessary.
I just say it in my head to myself. It has had a near 100% success rate for the past year. I don’t understand it, yet it works!
This really made my day. I’m a big fan of the ontogeny-filogeny thingy despite it often ends up disproved (e.g. recapitulation).
The other interesting theory, and the one I knew, was as a mechanism to empty air from the stomach, aiding milk consumption in mammals.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3504071/
I preferred yours.
Hiccups come from a part of our brain that’s much less evolved. It’s the same thing that fish use to push water through their gills.
And just like breathing, it’s involuntary.
You just have to wait it out until that part of your brain stem remembers it doesn’t need to do that anymore.
Breathing is a little weird in that regard. It’s a natural instinct that you don’t have to think about, but when you do think about it, you can control it more or less voluntarily.
Hiccups are often way more annoying and way more on the involuntary side of reflexes.
I’ve researched hiccups before, and experts say that it’s basically the reflex that’s meant to start newborn babies breathing. After that though, it’s basically an unnecessary vestigial reflex.
I’m no expert though, I just know hiccups are fucking annoying as hell!
I actually learned this from an oncology nurse whose patients sometimes get chronic hiccups from certain chemo; the thing to do is have someone pull down on your earlobes while slightly cupping your ears forward, and then you drink water slowly while they hold your earlobes. Works every time. I taught this to a friend who had trouble with hiccups after surgery and she says it saved her life.
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It ain’t all that serious yo, I ain’t about to die. Hiccups are a thing we can all relate to occasionally, just figured I’d ask what random tricks people have found useful.
For me, half the time a teaspoon of sugar does the trick, other times a glob of mustard does the trick. If my hiccups were chronic enough, of course I’d seek medical attention.
Well aren’t you a pleasant little dumpling of a person.
A lot of times hiccups are caused by your brain thinking that it needs more oxygen. So breathe deeply. Sometimes it works.
Quick sips of water works for me.
Another technique that works only once when someone else is having a hiccup is to offer them a glass of water with a knife inside. The moment they see it, hiccup is gone.
That second one sounds fun. We used to do a lemon/lime slice dunked in sugar at a bar I went to years ago. The sweet/sour difference used to confuse the brain for just long enough for most people it seemed
I get terrible hiccups. Painful terrible. Have since i was a kid. And they make a weirder sound than usual, if I’m in public people always whip their heads around to look at me. Anyway, pickles. When I’m hiccuping nothing has ever worked but then, once I started making my own pickles, I can now just eat a single pickle and be good. They’ll be gone. I’m just glad I like pickles now.
I usually just breathe in as much as I can and hold my breath until I need another gasp of air. It usually goes away after two or three times.
Lying on your back and pressing your knees to your chest is another way to get them to stop that works for me.
The holding your breath thing works. You inhale as much as you can, which stretches your diaphragm out, and hold it as long as you can, even through the next few hiccups. Works like a charm.
All the mythological cures rely on one specific thing: focusing on a task or overriding your brain’s autonomic systems with adrenaline (get scared). Don’t think about it and do something else with as much concentration as you can will. Sorry if you’re ADHD.
Yeah, I’m probably ADHD, and not easily scared. Hell, I handle snakes and spiders and shit sometimes. Good luck scaring me…
You’ll never own a home or save enough for retirement. The entire planet is under incredible stress and we’re literally making it uninhabitable for ourselves. Your tax dollars often go towards killing innocent people in other countries. You may have left the oven on.
If that didn’t do it, I’m out of ideas.
Trying that fear factor approach I see. Well thank you for the thought, but I’m not easily scared, and that trick doesn’t seem to work for me anyways.
Go for a run or cold shower. Get your heart rate up, similar effect.
I hold my breath for 2 breaths in a row. Works every. Single. Time.
When someone else has the hiccups, cup your hands together (like you’re about to pour water in them), hold them in front of them and excitedly tell them repeatedly (in a loud-ish, hurried voice like you’re about to miss out on the chance of a lifetime):
" Quick! Hiccup in my hands! Hurry up! Do it! Hiccup in my hands!"
Gotta do it quickly and unexpectedly enough to surprise them. They’ll either be so surprised that they forget the hiccup, or they will actually try to do it but be so focused on it that they won’t be able to.
It’s got a pretty high success rate for when I’ve tried it.
The only trick that worked for me was this.
Had been hiccuping for probably 5 minutes. Nothing working. Someone came up to me and just said “hiccup for me now” just waited for that hiccup. Kept asking for me to hiccup for maybe 30 seconds to a minute. Gone. No more hiccups.
He’s a witch!
Swallow a teaspoon of sugar. I read this when I was a kid, and it has always done the trick for me EVERY TIME I’ve done it.
This is actually what I was taught as a kid as well, somewhere around age 7. For me it only works around half the time though.
I figured I’d try something random when that didn’t work. Honestly I hate mustard, but it does seem to help get rid of hiccups sometimes.
My partner suggested this to me once and I thought, “nothing to lose” so I gave it a go.
Correlation does not imply causation, so I can’t guarantee that the sugar is doing anything at all, but every time except once I’ve had a teaspoon of sugar with hiccups, they have stopped.
To that end, I’ll be doing it as long as it keeps on seeming to have an effect.
get warm and eat a little snack
Tablespoon of pickle juice. You’re then going to have the urge to eat a pickle. Don’t do it - they’ll come back.
A shot of vinegar or lemon juice will also do it in my experience
Hold my breath while thinking of a soothing song. Alternatively, actively try to hiccup.
