What do I do with the hiccups?
The hiccups can be extremely annoying.
Start in a rather innocuous way, when the muscle under your lungs suddenly tenses and forces you to sharply inspire.
That causes the two openings between the vocal cords to close suddenly and hence the sound of the hiccups.
There are many potential triggers, from eating too fast to a sudden temperature change.
The hiccup itself is not dangerous, but it can be a side effect of a medication or the symptom of an underlying medical condition, such as asthma.
The BBC collected some suggestions on how to get rid of those irritating and involuntary noises.
What to do?
There are three main types of cures indicated for hiccups:
Breathe:
There is a theory that the cause of hiccups is a low carbon dioxide in your blood.
That can be solved with breathing exercises, such as holding or simply lowering the rate of breathing. There are people who use a paper bag to do the latter.
Do exercises:
The diaphragm is the muscle that is under your lungs, where the hiccups begin. There are those who say that it can be cured if you exercise.
To do this, you can bring your knees to your chest and keep them there for a couple of minutes. Or you can bend forward, trying to touch your toes, compressing your chest, to relieve spasm. Alternatively, you can breathe deeply several times and try to reach the space under your ribs to give your diaphragm a small massage.
Distract yourself:
Another stream of thought suggests doing something that distracts the brain.
For example, you can put some sugar on the back of your tongue and wait for it to dissolve before swallowing it. Or suck a piece of lemon.
There's also the classic: hit a scare.
Finally ...
Maybe you didn't know, but hiccups are more common than you think.
Babies get hiccups, but some of us start having it even before birth.
In addition, we are not the only mammals that experience them.
In fact, one theory says that mammals are hiccups because they need a way to expel air from the stomach when they are being breastfed.
And, as a curiosity, we leave you with the case of the American Charles Osborne who had a hiccup attack that lasted 68 years, from 1922 to 1990.
More recently, in Lincolnshire, England, it took three years to cure the hiccups of a man named Chris Sands.
Start in a rather innocuous way, when the muscle under your lungs suddenly tenses and forces you to sharply inspire.
That causes the two openings between the vocal cords to close suddenly and hence the sound of the hiccups.
There are many potential triggers, from eating too fast to a sudden temperature change.
The hiccup itself is not dangerous, but it can be a side effect of a medication or the symptom of an underlying medical condition, such as asthma.
The BBC collected some suggestions on how to get rid of those irritating and involuntary noises.
What to do?
There are three main types of cures indicated for hiccups:
Breathe:
There is a theory that the cause of hiccups is a low carbon dioxide in your blood.
That can be solved with breathing exercises, such as holding or simply lowering the rate of breathing. There are people who use a paper bag to do the latter.
Do exercises:
The diaphragm is the muscle that is under your lungs, where the hiccups begin. There are those who say that it can be cured if you exercise.
To do this, you can bring your knees to your chest and keep them there for a couple of minutes. Or you can bend forward, trying to touch your toes, compressing your chest, to relieve spasm. Alternatively, you can breathe deeply several times and try to reach the space under your ribs to give your diaphragm a small massage.
Distract yourself:
Another stream of thought suggests doing something that distracts the brain.
For example, you can put some sugar on the back of your tongue and wait for it to dissolve before swallowing it. Or suck a piece of lemon.
There's also the classic: hit a scare.
Finally ...
Maybe you didn't know, but hiccups are more common than you think.
Babies get hiccups, but some of us start having it even before birth.
In addition, we are not the only mammals that experience them.
In fact, one theory says that mammals are hiccups because they need a way to expel air from the stomach when they are being breastfed.
And, as a curiosity, we leave you with the case of the American Charles Osborne who had a hiccup attack that lasted 68 years, from 1922 to 1990.
More recently, in Lincolnshire, England, it took three years to cure the hiccups of a man named Chris Sands.
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