If you spend enough time at my
home, you will eventually hear someone shriek, "Sugar!" and run
into the kitchen to eat a spoonful of granulated sugar.
This is not a sign of addiction. It
just means that they have the hiccups and our favourite home remedy
is to eat a spoonful of sugar to stop them.
We all have our own methods for
trying to get rid of hiccups but I want to know which cures are
actually effective. Is there any evidence for one cure being the
best?
What are
hiccups?
Hiccups are caused by a spasm in
your diaphragm. The diaphragm is the muscle that separates
your thorax (including your lungs and heart) from your abdomen
(including your stomach and intestines).
When you breathe in, your diaphragm
contracts and pulls down and becomes flat in order to make room for
more air in the lungs. When you breathe out, your diaphragm expands
and forces air out of your lungs.
During a hiccup your diaphragm
spasms, causing you to take a quick breath in. This breath in is
then interrupted by the epiglottis closing and causing a "hic"
sound. (The epiglottis is a flap that covers the space between the
vocal cords).
So how do you stop
them?
There are lots of ideas about how
to stop hiccups. I've listed a few of them below.
The list is ordered from most
useful to most bizarre. Personally, I recommend sticking with the
first two methods.
A Spoonful of Sugar
Scientists in the 1970s found that
19 out of 20 patients with hiccups found that eating a spoonful of
granulated sugar stopped their hiccups.
How this works isn't fully known,
although it may be that the sugar affects the vagus nerve which
connects your brain and your tummy. This may stop the
diaphragm from spasming.
Drink with plugged
ears
Plug your ears while drinking a
glass of water. If you don't have a friend who is willing to put
their fingers in your ears while you drink, you can do it yourself
while drinking through a straw.
Again, no one really knows why this
works, but it does! There is some evidence that holding your
breath causes a small build up of CO2 in the blood which
affects the diaphragm.
Lemon with bitters or
salt
Eat a lemon wedge soaked with
bitters. Bitters is a herbal drink with some alcohol in it so
it obviously isn't suitable for children!
However, eating a slice of lemon
with salt on it also seems to work. It may help to restore the
body's salt balance and cure the hiccups but, again, nobody really
knows!
There are plenty more ideas
out there. Why not share YOUR favourite method of stopping
hiccups?
This article was written by Gillian
Mayman for the Mind the Science Gap blog and has been adapted with
the author's permission. To read the full article click here.
Gillian is student on the
University of Michigan Master of Public Health programme and posts
articles on the Mind the Science Gap blog every Monday. You
can view her blog entries here.
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