Why do they happen? And more importantly, what can you do to get rid of them? Cleveland Clinic is a non-profit academic medical center. Advertising on our site helps support our mission. We do not endorse non-Cleveland Clinic products or services. Centuries ago, people claimed hiccups meant a growth spurt for children.
Today, we understand the mechanics of a hiccup: When the diaphragm — a muscle situated between the lungs and the stomach — becomes irritated, it begins to spasm. This spasm causes what is commonly known as hiccups. This helps explain why they sometimes occur during emotional situations or temperature changes. They can also kick in after you swallow too much air, eat too quickly or too much, or experience excitement or anxiety.
It is unclear if hiccups have a physiologic role. One problem, Provine notes, is that hiccups have been difficult to study: "You can't just go into the lab and ask someone to hiccup for you.
Hiccups happen when the diaphragm and external intercostal muscles involuntarily contract, causing someone to rapidly inhale.
Then about 35 milliseconds later, the vocal cords slam shut, causing the characteristic "hic" sound. It's a precisely timed series of events. Doctors also call hiccups singultus or synchronous diaphragmatic flutter. Having hiccups for an hour or two can be a bother. But hiccups that don't go away can be a sign that there's something seriously wrong with you.
The person generally cited as the world record holder for hiccups is Charles Osborne , an Iowa farmer who had them for 68 straight years — from to Although he was able to have a normal life, some people with intractable hiccups generally categorized as for more than a month or two experience insomnia, drastic weight loss, and exhaustion.
And for people with just persistent hiccups more than 48 hours , it can be a sign of a serious underlying health problem , including nerve damage, a brain tumor, kidney failure, or a reaction caused by various drugs.
So if you've had hiccups for more than two days, it could be time to see a doctor. Many so-called hiccup cures have existed for quite some time — drinking water, holding your breath, eating sugar, having someone scare you, and on and on. B ut doctors are still trying new things. Two publications from and describe case studies of a doctor massaging a patient's rectum to cure intractable hiccups.
And in , another group reported a case of someone who had hiccups for four days and then was cured after ejaculating during sex. Both activities stimulate the vagus nerve, which helps control unconscious activity of the heart and digestive tract.
Francis Fesmire, the doctor who published the first rectal massage study, later said that he would recommend sex as a cure instead. The few folk remedies that seem to be based on a reasonable scientific concept involve holding your breath or breathing into a paper bag.
At least for patients with intractable hiccups, increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide they breathe has been shown to decrease how often they hiccup. Breathing into a paper bag would also increase carbon dioxide in the body. Despite all these intriguing possibilities about how to cure hiccups, the medical literature usually stops with just a case study of one or two patients.
And that doesn't really say much. To know if something actually works, doctors need to perform a controlled medical trial where half the people receive the treatment in question and half receive a placebo for comparison. And hiccups just haven't been a hot area for such trials, which can also be fairly expensive to do.
Though it worked for me after consuming something with cayenne pepper , it may not be a good solution in public. In adults, persistent or intractable hiccups lasting more than 48 hours or more than a month, respectively could be a result of lesions on the brain paywall , esophageal cancer PDF , or they can be side-effect of certain drugs, including chemotherapy paywall.
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