When was the last time you had hiccups? Did you drink lots of
fizzy drinks over the school holidays? Did you eat your Christmas
dinner too quickly? Did you know that eating too fast and drinking
fizzy pop can give you hiccups?
Drinking lots of fizzy drinks
can cause hiccups
Doctors call hiccups "singultus". Hiccups happen when your
diaphragm (the muscle underneath your ribcage that controls your
breathing) suddenly contracts, causing air to be sucked into your
lungs quickly. This means the flap at the top of your windpipe
snaps shut, causing a hiccuping sound.
Do you know why we
hiccup?
Even doctors don't know why hiccups happen, although they think
that eating too fast and drinking fizzy pop might cause
hiccups. Doctors also don't know why we keep hiccuping once we've
started.
The diaphragm is an involuntary muscle, so we can't control it
like we can control our skeletal muscles (the muscles that help us
move). This is good news when we're sleeping - what would happen if
we were asleep and stopped telling the diaphragm to contract? We
would stop breathing. However, it's not good news when we're
hiccuping, because we can't tell the diaphragm to stop!
Did you know that babies hiccup
before they are born?
Doctors think that unborn babies hiccup to make sure their
diaphragm is strong enough for them to breath air.
What can you do to make hiccuping stop? No one knows for sure.
Some people think that breathing in deeply and holding your breath
seems to work. Maybe the build up of carbon dioxide that happens
when you hold your breath helps to stop the hiccups.
Does holding your breath stop
hiccups?
Other people think that drinking a glass of water quickly, or
even backwards, can help. Or how about scaring someone? Some people
think that giving someone a shock will stop hiccups. Next time you
or someone you know has hiccups, try out several methods to see if
any of them stop the hiccups. When you find a method that works
once, try it out on the next person with hiccups and see if you can
build up some evidence to show that your way of stopping hiccups
really does work.