Everyone has a favourite hiccup trick: drink water, hold your breath, swallow a spoonful of sugar, get someone to scare you. So how do you actually get rid of hiccups? The honest answer is a little less exciting. Most hiccups stop on their own within a few minutes, and there’s surprisingly little good evidence that any home remedy reliably stops them. Some simple tricks are reasonable to try, but they may get the credit simply because the hiccups were about to stop anyway. So what causes that strange little “hic” in the first place?
What are Hiccups?
A hiccup begins with an involuntary contraction of your diaphragm, the large sheet of muscle beneath your lungs that does most of the work of breathing. The sudden contraction pulls air in, and almost immediately your vocal cords snap shut, cutting off the rush of air and making the familiar sound. MedlinePlus describes it as exactly that two-part event: the diaphragm movement, then the quick closing of the vocal cords.
The medical name is singultus. It’s a brief reflex involving the diaphragm, the breathing muscles, the nerves that control them and the parts of the brain that manage breathing. It’s normally harmless, but once it starts firing repeatedly, there’s not much you can consciously do to switch it off, and nobody is entirely sure why the reflex exists at all.
So, how do you get rid of hiccups?
For an ordinary bout, no remedy has been shown to work every time. MedlinePlus says plainly that there is no sure way to stop hiccups, and most episodes stop by themselves within a few minutes.
If you want to try something, simple and harmless options from NI Direct’s hiccups guidance include sipping ice-cold water, holding your breath for a short time, and pulling your knees up to your chest and leaning forward. Swallowing a little sugar is another old favourite. NI Direct is upfront that the evidence for these tricks is limited and that they won’t help everyone. The explanations for why they might help vary: some may briefly change your breathing, and others may stimulate the nerves involved in the hiccup reflex.
The important thing is not to mistake a plausible explanation for proof. The most-studied gadget is HiccAway, a rigid drinking straw that takes real suction to draw water through, developed at UT Health San Antonio. In a 2021 study in JAMA Network Open, users reported that it stopped their hiccups in most cases. That study was a self-reported survey of 249 volunteers with no control group, though, and as ScienceAlert noted, placebo-controlled trials would be needed to know how well it really works.
Terence Anthoney, the doctor who treated the man with the world’s longest case of hiccups, suggested that most remedies only seem to work because the person’s “hiccup clock” has run out, as West Side Spirit reports. If your hiccups stop 30 seconds after a glass of water, it’s very tempting to credit the water. It might have helped, or they might simply have run their course.
There are plenty of stranger remedies, from drinking upside down to pulling your tongue, and none has emerged as a reliable fix. Some internet tricks are best left alone altogether, particularly anything involving choking, extreme breath-holding, awkward positions or deliberately restricting your oxygen. There’s no need to turn hiccups into a trip to the emergency department.
Why do we get hiccups?
This is where it gets interesting, because scientists still don’t have a definitive answer. One idea is that hiccups are an ancient reflex left over from an earlier stage of our evolution. Another is that they have a role in early development. Babies hiccup a lot, and healthdirect notes they can even hiccup in the uterus. According to UCL, hiccups begin in the womb as early as nine weeks.
In a 2019 study at University College London, researchers led by Kimberley Whitehead recorded the brain activity of 13 newborn babies while they hiccupped. They found that each hiccup triggered a large wave of brain signals, which could help a developing brain learn to monitor and regulate the muscles used for breathing. Whitehead suggested that adult hiccups might be a leftover reflex from infancy, when it served an important purpose. That’s still a hypothesis rather than a proven explanation, but it suggests hiccups may not be a useless glitch after all.
What triggers hiccups in adults
Most short bouts have no serious cause, and the trigger is often impossible to pin down. NI Direct lists stress, strong emotions like excitement, and eating and drinking as common triggers. MedlinePlus adds eating too quickly, eating too much and eating hot or spicy foods. NI Direct also suggests avoiding alcoholic, fizzy or hot drinks, chewing gum (which makes you swallow air), and eating or drinking something very cold straight after something hot. A very full stomach is a well-known culprit too, which helps explain why a big meal can set them off.
Hiccups that won’t go away are different. Healthdirect notes that long-lasting hiccups are rare, and can be caused by certain medical conditions or some medicines. That’s why a bout that drags on shouldn’t be dismissed as just a stubborn case.
When to see a doctor
If your hiccups last more than 48 hours, see a doctor. Healthdirect calls hiccups that last more than two days chronic. HealthLink BC uses “persistent” for hiccups lasting longer than 48 hours, and “intractable” for those lasting more than a month. Long bouts can affect eating and sleeping, and occasionally lead to weight loss and insomnia, and they can sometimes be a symptom of another medical problem that needs investigating. See a doctor sooner if your hiccups come with other symptoms that worry you, such as trouble breathing or significant pain. For non-urgent advice, call Healthdirect on 1800 022 222, and in an emergency, call 000.
The man who hiccupped for 68 years
Most of us are fed up after five minutes. Charles Osborne had hiccups for about 68 years. An American farmer, he started hiccupping in 1922 during an incident with a hog he was preparing to slaughter, and the hiccups continued until 1990, according to Guinness World Records. He hiccupped between 20 and 40 times a minute, by most estimates around 430 million times in all.
Osborne believed he had burst a tiny blood vessel in his brain in the accident, though the cause was never confirmed. Doctors tried all sorts of treatments, and Guinness reports that one friend even fired both barrels of a shotgun behind him in the hope of scaring them away. None of it worked. He learned to mask the sound by breathing between hiccups, and according to Smithsonian Magazine he led a relatively normal life, selling farm machinery and auctioning livestock. Then, in 1990, the hiccups stopped for reasons nobody could explain. He remains the Guinness World Record holder for the longest attack of hiccups. So the next time a bout of hiccups has been bothering you for ten minutes, spare a thought for Charles Osborne.
A quick word before you go: I’m not a doctor, and nothing here replaces advice from one. Ordinary hiccups are harmless, but if yours have lasted more than two days, get them checked. For health advice in Australia, call Healthdirect on 1800 022 222, and in an emergency, call 000.
Hiccups are a good example of the body running an automatic process without asking permission. Your body is constantly adjusting things like breathing, temperature and blood chemistry to keep them in range, which I explore in what is homeostasis? If you’re curious about another involuntary reflex with a surprising backstory, see what are goosebumps?
Sources
- Healthdirect: Hiccups
- NI Direct: Hiccups
- MedlinePlus: Hiccups
- MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Hiccups
- HealthLink BC: Hiccups
- JAMA Network Open (via PubMed Central): Evaluation of the Forced Inspiratory Suction and Swallow Tool to Stop Hiccups
- ScienceAlert: This special straw could fix hiccups better than most home remedies
- UCL News: Newborn baby hiccups could be key to brain development
- Guinness World Records: The extreme measures a man with a 68-year attack of hiccups took to try and stop them
- Smithsonian Magazine: The curious case of Charles Osborne, who hiccupped for 68 years straight
- West Side Spirit: One man hiccuped for 68 years