The Cure for Hiccup Exists, and It's Free | Hacker News Reader

The Cure for Hiccup Exists, and It's Free

theatlantic.com

27 pointsubac17 comments

Anecdotal and not guaranteed to work for everyone: I have found holding my breath for as long as possible stops hiccups. And you can't cheat with this, you literally have to hold your breath until you think you're going to die. Most people don't like unpleasant situations like that, so when I suggest it, they scoff, but for me it works most of the time.

I think the reason it works, is it dampens the power the spasms have, by doing a pattern interrupt. 'Oh looks like we can't do spasms anymore, this person is running out of oxygen, let's re-allocate resources to things like breathing properly'.

The reason you give is also how I understand it to work. There usually comes a point where I would think I should have had another spasm but none came, and shortly after that is when I release my breath. It works very reliably; I cannot remember a time when it failed to get rid of hiccups.

Interesting! A technique I've used successfully in the past is the opposite, but with the same effect: breathing out completely and holding that. Comes with the "advantage" that you get to the point of thinking you're going to die much quicker.

For myself, I hold my breath and swallow twice. Never failed, and much less uncomfortable

From the article:

> SSMI (Supra-SupraMaximal Inspiration), as the medical profession’s predilection for abbreviations has it, boils down to a simple breathing exercise. First, exhale completely, then inhale a deep breath. Wait 10 seconds, then—without exhaling—inhale a little more. Wait another five seconds, then top up the breath again. Finally, exhale. Generally, you will find that your singultus is gone.

> ...the SSMI technique is just a more sophisticated take on the old folk remedy that poses that the cure for hiccups is simply to hold your breath.

that makes sense. I’ve always had the best results by slow controlled breathing. The control seems to interrupt the spasms of the hiccup.

I find that breathing out until completely out of air, holding that for 5-10 seconds, then breathing as deeply as possible and holding that for 5-10 seconds stops hiccups every time. Anecdotal of course but works for me.

I was strongly hoping that they'd be telling their audience to stick things up their butt. Alas not, but the method is, in the words of pokémon masters everywhere, "Super Effective" and won an IgNobel. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2299306/

Just look up "digital rectal massage". Digital here means with fingers.

> I asked Morris why he never took his hiccup research further. “Why did we never do a clinical trial? Well, you know, we got busy,” he said. “But also, how would we do a clinical trial? Who would pay for it? There’s no drug we can sell. Nobody will invest the money and hire all the people and do all the regulatory paperwork, because there’s no money to be made.”

Our health-care system is not designed to promote free cures. Patent laws allow innovators to profit from the discoveries they make or inventions they create, but only if those discoveries or inventions can be packaged as a product that enables some form of commercial gatekeeping. SSMI has no such market potential: It can be described in a couple of sentences, and copyright doesn’t cover it.

It’s hard to suppress the feeling that the crucial difference between SSMI and HiccAway is that only one of them can be monetized. I don’t at all think Seifi is motivated primarily by profit; he seems rightly proud to help people avoid a major minor nuisance. And he worked exceptionally hard for years to make the HiccAway straw a success.

But with that same motivation, could someone have done the same for the breathing technique? Maybe, for all the challenges of building a successful company, publicizing valuable but free information is even harder.

My method: swallow water while holding your breath and pinching your nose. Learned this at a young age, it definitely works. I think it creates the pressure that the article discusses.

I used to "cure" my hiccups as a kid, by getting as upside-down as possible, generally by hanging off a bed or couch, but always with head at a lower level than stomach. Then drink water. The Esophagus has to be working to push water uphill.

It has same effect: pressure on the diaphragm. It worked ... ish, or it was at least occasionally successful or gave some relief, better than nothing.

Totally anecdotal, but it has worked on everyone that I've shared this with. Take a paper towel and put it over a cup of water and drink the water through the paper towel. I'm guessing the net affect of this is similar to the straw mentioned in the article. It feels easier to do that a breathing exercise.

It also does work while being inebriated

Full article https://archive.md/8kLPE

And the linked kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hiccaway/hiccaway-prove...

I've learned while raising my babies that making them laugh or cry can cure their hiccups. Crying is obviously not an attractive option for adults, but I suppose faking a laugh might do the trick.

My go-to method is to eat a tablespoon of sugar. Works every time.

If you can hold your breath and punch yourself in the balls, you can forget about the hiccups and they even seem to go away.

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