You are from United States. Cure For Hiccups
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...I have heard of all kinds of remedies for hiccups (hiccoughs). I have been told to hold my breath. I’ve been advised to breathe into a paper bag. Drink a glass of water, I’m told. Or, stand on your head. Then, there is always the person who tries to scare the shit out of you. The scaring thing sometimes works, but not nearly always.
A hiccup, as defined by Google: “A hiccup is an involuntary spasm of the diaphragm; typically this repeats several times a minute until some home remedy is applied. The sudden rush of air into the lungs causes the glottis to close, creating the ‘hic’ noise.”
The one remedy that I have found the most success with is to take long, slow, deep breaths for a few minutes. It can sometimes take up to five minutes, but it usually works within 2 or 3 minutes for me. This usually does the trick. This is the method I always use to cure the hiccups when I get them. This makes perfect sense to me because your diaphragm is in spasm and the slow, deep breaths are calming the diaphragm down and resetting it to a more natural rhythm.
The problem with telling people this, is that most people try it for 30 seconds and proclaim it a failure because they didn’t have the patience to stick with it. So, next time you get the hiccups, give it a try and give it time. You’ll probably get rid of them within a few minutes.
If you’ve tried this method and it works (or even if it doesn’t), please leave a comment here and let myself and others know about it.
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Deep breathing tends to work for me, but… I have an aging mother who get hiccups nearly every time she sits down to a meal. Her doctor told me to try this: When she starts to hiccup, ask her what she ate at her last meal, then the meal before that, etc.. It usually only takes a few questions to make the hiccups stop. And it works on other people, too. I’m not sure why, other than the distraction principle.
June 26th, 2007 at 8:44 am
Distraction… Never thought of that one.
But, if it works for your mom, why mess with what works? 