I’ve tried many things before, but in the past couple days I’ve found that eating a packet or two of mustard tends to get rid of hiccups.
What sort of tricks do you folks have?
For me, it reliably works to drink a big glass of water. But probably just a me thing…
In the order I try them, usually the first one works for me:
Hold my breath, cold shower, go for a run.
I hold my breath and “push” the air blocking my lungs from emptying with my mouth/throat.
Chug down a big glass of water on a single breath.
Try to burp. Especially right after a hiccup.
I would add that you can swallow air to create the need to burp.
Swallow a pinch of salt. Don’t let it dissolve on your tongue; just swallow.
This will sound like a joke, but is 100% true.
The most effective, clinically proven, method to cure hiccups is anal digital stimulation. Finger your butthole. You don’t have to go deep, unless you want to, just tease the opening though. You can have someone tongue punch your fart box as well because the method of stimulation doesn’t matter and I am sure the research ran out of funding before testing alternative methods of stimulation.
I think I’ll just squirt some mustard up my ass, but thank you for the advice 👍
You’re doing twice the work, but I ain’t here to kink shame.
Easy! Just disbelieve them!
Say the following out loud:
Hiccups are a spasm of the diaphragm
A spasm is defined as a random tensing of a muscle
If the hiccups are random, they will not appear in a pattern
Therefore these hiccups do not exist.
If you hiccup part way through, you have to start over. Once you get through the whole thing, your hiccups are cured.
Ok, now hear me out. This isn’t just a joke, I’ve had at least two people that I hadn’t seen in years call me up and say, I need you to tell me the hiccup cure, now!
My best theory as to why it works, is that you’re focusing on repeating the words fast enough, and/or it makes you breath irregularly and breaks the hiccups. Or maybe it’s just the magical power of the mind! Oooooooooh!
Oh. It never works when you’re drunk. I don’t know why, but drink hiccups seem to be resistant to the method.
There’s something about focus or attention. If I hiccup, as soon as I realize it’s happening it stops. If I’m drunk I might not notice for a bit and the hiccups will continue until I can bring my will to bear on them.
You can also just memorize and recite this, comes in handy for more than just hiccups:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Swallow a teaspoon of sugar. I read this when I was a kid, and it has always done the trick for me EVERY TIME I’ve done it.
My partner suggested this to me once and I thought, “nothing to lose” so I gave it a go.
Correlation does not imply causation, so I can’t guarantee that the sugar is doing anything at all, but every time except once I’ve had a teaspoon of sugar with hiccups, they have stopped.
To that end, I’ll be doing it as long as it keeps on seeming to have an effect.
Hold my breath while thinking of a soothing song. Alternatively, actively try to hiccup.
Hiccups come from a part of our brain that’s much less evolved. It’s the same thing that fish use to push water through their gills.
And just like breathing, it’s involuntary.
You just have to wait it out until that part of your brain stem remembers it doesn’t need to do that anymore.
Breathing is a little weird in that regard. It’s a natural instinct that you don’t have to think about, but when you do think about it, you can control it more or less voluntarily.
Hiccups are often way more annoying and way more on the involuntary side of reflexes.
I’ve researched hiccups before, and experts say that it’s basically the reflex that’s meant to start newborn babies breathing. After that though, it’s basically an unnecessary vestigial reflex.
I’m no expert though, I just know hiccups are fucking annoying as hell!
Take a glass of water, bend over forward, drink from the opposite side of the glass while your head is upside down. Drink the whole thing. Cured!
Just quickly drinking a full glass of water usually does the trick
I used to do this with a straw while head was upside down. Worked really well when I was younger but haven’t tried it recently.
I do the thing where you drink water while rubbing your tongue on the roof of your mouth. Success rate is pretty low tbh.
This is it, although I just put the water in my mouth and bend over then swallow. Swallowing water while upside down = 100% cure.
I hold my breath for 2 breaths in a row. Works every. Single. Time.
All the mythological cures rely on one specific thing: focusing on a task or overriding your brain’s autonomic systems with adrenaline (get scared). Don’t think about it and do something else with as much concentration as you can will. Sorry if you’re ADHD.
Yeah, I’m probably ADHD, and not easily scared. Hell, I handle snakes and spiders and shit sometimes. Good luck scaring me…
Go for a run or cold shower. Get your heart rate up, similar effect.
You’ll never own a home or save enough for retirement. The entire planet is under incredible stress and we’re literally making it uninhabitable for ourselves. Your tax dollars often go towards killing innocent people in other countries. You may have left the oven on.
If that didn’t do it, I’m out of ideas.
Trying that fear factor approach I see. Well thank you for the thought, but I’m not easily scared, and that trick doesn’t seem to work for me anyways.
The weirdest one I’ve tried that works is take your pinky finger and just barely, almost imperceptivly, rub your ear lobe with it. The only reason I can think of why it works is because you focus on not touching your ear too hard or too soft and just… Forget to hiccup? 🤷🏻♂️
Update: I went and smoked a bowl of weed. My hiccups turned into a spell of about a dozen sneezes. Now I’m good, no more hiccups or sneezes haha!
Smoking (green or otherwise) is also supposedly a way to stop hiccups. It can, however, also cause them in the first place. I usually find the latter more true than the former, personally. 😅
Have an upvote for the advice, but that ain’t working for me right now. Sometimes the mustard trick seems to work for a couple hours or so, but that’s hit and miss as well.
I dunno, guess I’m gonna pack a bowl of green and see if that helps… 🤷♂️
Say this out loud:
“I am not a fish.”
Repeat as necessary.
I just say it in my head to myself. It has had a near 100% success rate for the past year. I don’t understand it, yet it works!
This really made my day. I’m a big fan of the ontogeny-filogeny thingy despite it often ends up disproved (e.g. recapitulation).
The other interesting theory, and the one I knew, was as a mechanism to empty air from the stomach, aiding milk consumption in mammals.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3504071/
I preferred yours.
