How do you cure a hiccup?
When I get the hiccups I don't do 'em by halves.
I don't get them very often, but when I do they're so violent they can knock me off a chair.
So I had an awful lot of syphathy when doing a little research on a Weird Science Factoid yesterday when I came across the story of poor old Charles Osbourne.
He got the hiccups while he was weighing a hog way back in 1922. Problem was he didn't stop hiccuping until 1990. That's 68 years of hiccup followed by hiccup followed by hiccup.
Charles hiccupped an estimated 430 million times and the poor fellow died just a year after he stopped.
In the early years Charles hiccupped up to 40 times a minute, which in the later years slowed to 20 times.
He did, however, manage a somewhat ordinary life - married twice and the father of eight children.
So what has science got to say about the humble hiccup?
Well, doctors define it as the spasmodic contraction of the diaphragm that repeats several times per minute. In humans, the abrupt rush of air into the lungs causes the epiglottis to close, creating the "hic" sound.
The most common causes are eating too much, drinking carbonated beverages, excessive consumption of alcohol, sudden temperature changes and e xcitement or emotional stress.
Although most cases of hiccups only last a few minutes, they can, like Charlie, last a lot longer. Medics says this is down to nerve damage or even a tumour.
What I'm interested in, though, is the madcap cures out there.
Doctors say any techniques for getting rid of hiccups are all a load of old tosh. You're favourite cure is nothing but a placebo effect - you think it will work and so it does.
Certainly, my cure certainly won't be for everyone, a good old fashioned thump to the back.
You can find a comprehensive list of all known methods here, although I've spotted some I might try out next time:
Drink Pickle Juice
Drink about a half a teaspoon of pickle juice every 7-10 seconds until your hiccups stop.
Ear Method
Drink a normal-sized gulp of water, but don't swallow! Leave the water in your mouth.
Pull down both your earlobes.
Tilt your head back. Swallow. It works!
The Vinegar Method
Drink a teaspoon of vinegar and this should cure hiccups unless you drink the last bit of vinegar in the bottle.
The Purple Dinosaur Cure
Just say purple dinosaur. It automatically cures the hiccups for some people.
The White Horse Cure
This is for curing friends. Ask them when they last saw a white horse and if they think hard enough it will go, but will not work if they live on a farm and own one or seen one recently.
Have you got a cure you would like to share? Let me know.
Weird Science Factoid: Most alcoholic beverages contain all 13 minerals necessary to sustain human life. Happy days!
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
Drinking carbonated beverages, such as beer, can cause short-term hiccups which generally last for a few minutes.I only said that because I have a way of getting rid of the hiccups that shows the contrary of it.I'm a fan of the Beer of the month clubs and I found out that taking repeated small sips of a full beer with a short pause between sips (a second or less) will solve the hiccup problem.It works every time for me.