It's the middle of the day, and you've just finished eating lunch with your friends, and suddenly you hear yourself go, "Hic!" and you think to yourself, "Oh no, I've got the hiccups again?" and you try every secret way to stop them because sometimes it feels like they will never go away. But have you ever wondered where those funny noises come from? And why do they happen? This blog will explore the symptoms, causes, and home remedies for hiccups.

To understand why you sometimes make random, funny noises, you should know that everything your body does has a reason behind it. Hiccups are caused by your diaphragm, a part of your body responsible for many of your bodily functions.

Why do Hiccups Happen?

The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle in charge of respiration at the bottom of your chest, right below the lungs. It works by contracting itself rhythmically and continually. So, every time you breathe in air, the diaphragm contracts and flattens, allowing the chest cavity to enlarge. This creates a vacuum, pulling air into the lungs. When you exhale, the diaphragm relaxes and turns back to its dome-like shape, forcing air out of the lungs.

Hiccups, also known as synchronous diaphragmatic flutter (SFD) or singultus, are completely harmless and temporary, but they can be very annoying at times. But what causes them?

Hiccups can be triggered by various factors, including:

• Eating or drinking too quickly: Consuming food or drinking something very fast can sometimes lead to swallowing air, which can irritate the diaphragm and result in hiccups. Studies have shown that drinking sodas and alcohol can also cause hiccups.
• Eating spicy or hot foods: Foods that are too spicy to consume can irritate the nerves that control the diaphragm, leading to hiccups.
• Emotional distress, such as excitement: Strong emotions can stimulate the vagus nerve, which oversees the majority of bodily functions, including the control of moods, immune responses, digestion, and heart rate. This nerve establishes the connection between the brain and the intestines but also plays a role in the hiccup reflex.
• Carbonated beverages: The carbonation inside soda cans or bottles and other fizzy drinks can cause the stomach to expand, putting pressure right on the diaphragm.
• Temperature changes: Sudden changes in temperature, such as drinking something very cold after eating a very hot meal, can trigger hiccups.

Although hiccups are temporary and happen to most of us from time to time, some people have had chronic symptoms for a few days, and some still have hiccups to this day. 

These are very rare and unusual cases where the hiccups either randomly showed up one day and never left, or an accident caused them to trigger an attack that never stopped like the famous title holder of the most extended hiccup attack ever recorded in the Guinness World Record, Charles Osbourne.

Rare Cases of Hiccups

This man suffered an accident involving a hog in 1922 while working at a farm near Union, Nebraska. He said he was picking up the hog to get it ready for butchering but then fell and felt no pain whatsoever.

Later, after looking for an impossible cure, the doctor helped figure out what had happened that day and found out Osbourne popped a tiny vessel, the size of a needle, inside the brain stem that inhibits the hiccup's response. This accident led him to live the next 68 years with incurable hiccups.

Although Osbourne traveled countless miles to visit many doctors to try to find an answer or perhaps a cure for the annoying hiccups, unfortunately, the only thing he found was a breathing technique that taught him how to conceal the "hic" sound. He suppressed it with air while breathing in between hiccups.

On average, Osbourne would have 20 to 40 spams in his diaphragm per minute, which in total makes an estimated 430 million times he hiccuped during his lifetime before he passed away in May 1991 at age 97.

How to Deal with Hiccups

Again, even though it is rare for you to have a case of the hiccups like Osbourne did, here are some "home remedies" for the hiccups you can try whenever you breathe a little wrong or eat something too fast.

• Holding your breath: Take a deep breath and hold it for as long as possible. This action can help relax the diaphragm and eventually stop the hiccup reflex.
• Drink water: The quantity doesn't really matter as long as it is cold, but remember to sip and drink it slowly. Do not chug it, as that might make the hiccups worse or persist. Drinking it slowly helps soothe the diaphragm, eventually stopping the hiccup cycle.
• Swallowing granulated sugar: Take a spoonful of white or brown sugar from the kitchen and swallow it; this may stimulate the vagus nerve and stop the hiccups.
• Breathing into a paper bag: This can help increase carbon dioxide levels in the blood, which may help reset the diaphragm.
• Gargling with cold water: You can stimulate the vagus nerve the same way the granulated sugar does and interrupt the hiccup reflex.

While hiccups are usually harmless, persistent or severe hiccups that last for more than 48 hours may indicate an underlying medical condition. So, in a way, these hiccups can help you identify:

• Diseases affecting the diaphragm, such as pneumonia and pleurisy (a condition that affects the inside membrane of the chest cavity and tissue around the lungs.
• Brain infections, injuries, tumors, or strokes can also be conditions that trigger hiccups.
• When your body can't break down certain nutrients into energy, causing a build-up, it can lead to hiccups.
• Liver or kidney problems can make the hiccups subside.
• Some medications like chemotherapy, corticosteroids used to treat inflammation, and pain medicine such as morphine can also cause hiccups.

Now, are there any types of medications that can help alleviate the hiccups? Well, yes. Although we might even be centuries away from figuring out a definite cure, the have been some pharmacologic remedies that have been used to try to put an end to the hiccups.

So here are some medications and other different treatments that could help people get rid of the hiccups, such as:

• Baclofen: This type of medicine is a muscle relaxant.
• Chlorpromazine: used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, and acute psychosis.
• Metoclopramide: usually used to treat esophagus problems.

However, you should always consult with your healthcare provider first. Finding the cause of your intractable hiccups might take a while since there could be hundreds of things. In case you were wondering, intractable hiccups cannot be inherited since they are not genetic. In some cases, a cause is never determined.

The doctor might prescribe these or other medications to try and help stop a mild case of hiccups or at least decrease their rate. The dose might be slowly reduced until you stop taking the medicine altogether. In rare cases, medication won't even do the trick, so don't forget to try the home remedies listed above to get rid of those annoying, persistent hiccups we get occasionally.

So remember, when treating a patient, or more commonly, when someone you know has a case of hiccups. In this post, we talked a lot about many ways to try to stop the hiccups from happening, and there are other ways that are less common.

These ways are sometimes funny and bizarre. So, to finish it up, here are some of the funniest and weirdest ways that you might or might not have heard about how to stop the hiccups.

• Run around your house three times without thinking about a fox completely.
• Think of the last white horse you saw.
• Close your eyes and press gently on your eyeballs.
• Touch your tongue with your index finger, and then use it to draw a cross on your forehead.
• Bring both index fingers as close together as you possibly can without having them touch each other.
• To prevent babies from having hiccups, sometimes cutting a small piece of fabric from the baby's sleeve and placing it on top of the baby's forehead can do the trick.

I remember when I was young, my mom used to try and scare us by having us think we had a bug on us, or she would act scared of something that was not there to make us take our minds off of having the hiccups, let me tell you, nine out of ten times it always worked with us. Maybe you can remember some funny ways your parents or friends used to stop the hiccups; if not, you can always ask them about it!