Hiccups - Wacky Remedies and Medical Intervention

Hiccups are so annoying and embarrassing. Ever hiccuped when your mouth was open? That one can be heard across the street.

What are hiccups? Hiccups are caused when your breathing becomes unsynchronized. The nerves responsible for keeping this smooth rhythm of breathing in and out have failed. Normally when you inhale, your diaphragm should be relaxing as your lungs fill with air. When you hiccup your throat is having a spasm that blocks the airflow and interrupts your breathing. Since this malady occurs with a spasm of the throat, one of the best cures is to take deep breaths, in and out slowly. You want to slow down your breathing so the nerves can becomes synchronized again, thus ending your hiccups.

Hiccups can be brought on by: drinking too much alcohol or carbonated drink, sudden excitement, gulping down your food to fast, swallowing an ice-cold drink quickly and laughing too hard on a full stomach. Nervousness, tiredness or indigestion can bring on the hiccups. The worse one is when you wake up from surgery with the hiccups. This is a common occurrence and having these uncontrolled hiccups just increases your pain because you can't lie still.

Wacky cures like drinking from a glass while you're upside down may get your face wet but probably won't stop the hiccups. The idea is to get your diaphragm to relax and that isn't going to happen if someone tries to scare you out of your hiccups. One thing that might work is to hold your breath and then exhale slowly or the deep breathing we talked about earlier. You might try sipping a glass of warm water slowly or try putting a bag over your mouth and nose. It's thought that the building of up carbon dioxide will "force" the system into synchronization. If your hiccups last more than three hours you should go see your doctor.

The Guinness World Record for hiccups goes to an American man Charles Osborne who had the hiccups for 68 years, from 1922 to 1990. Another sufferer, teenager Jennifer Mee from Florida hiccuped for five weeks. Her hiccups ended but when they returned, her neurologist suggested that she may actually have Tourette's Syndrome, a malady in which the sufferer has uncontrolled movements and speech. There are medications to treat Tourettes but they are not very efficacious.

Medications are rarely used except in persistent hiccups. These include Dilation, which is used for seizures, and Thorazine which is an anti-psychotic. Both of these drugs are meant to induce relaxation in the patient so the hiccups will stop. One remedy you can use with a child is to put one-half teaspoon of corn syrup on the back of their tongue and have them hold their tongue out as long as they can before swallowing. This same remedy can be used with adults, only use sugar instead of corn syrup. It can be used up to 3 times every 2 minutes. If it hasn't helped by then you'll have to try something else.

There can be some real metabolic reasons for your hiccups, which include an infection, a tumor or other metabolic disorder. The doctor will examine your ear to see if there is an irritant in there, like a feather. A chest x-ray and fluoroscopy may reveal some abnormality that needs to be addressed. If you've eaten or drank too much, the excess gas in your stomach is pushing on your diaphragm and may be causing the hiccups. If excess gas is suspected the doctor may insert a gastrointestinal tube into your stomach to relieve the excess gas.

Some people hiccup as little as 4 times a minute while others hiccup up to 60 times a minute. I think we'd all agree that hiccups are a real nuisance and can be extremely embarrassing if you hiccup loudly in church. The best overall cure for hiccups is relaxation through controlled breathing. Also try lying on your stomach on your bed.