While not lasting 68 years, my father-in-law has been known on multiple occasions to get hiccups for several days. When he starts hiccupping the mood of their household immediately turns to that of concern. Throughout my life I have usually regarded them as being a minor thing; one part amusement with two parts annoyance. Something that lasts a minute or two, but quickly and easily rectified. I can surely understand, however, how having hiccups that go around the clock could be a rather serious affliction. How does one sleep? Eating or drinking would also be problematic.
When I was a kid, mom swore by drinking water out of the opposite side of the glass while bending over. It worked for me every time. Since then, I heard about a more convenient cure, and that is to take three short inhales, hold your breath for a few seconds and then attempt to take three more short inhales (without exhaling, of course).
Anyway, all this to ask what are your go-to hiccup cures?
I saw this in a cartoon when I was a kid, and it’s worked for me ever since. Pour a glass of water. Say “One,” take a sip. “Two,” take a sip. All the way up to ten. My hiccups usually stop by the time I reach five. This only works with water.
I honestly do not remember the last time I had hiccups. A friend of ours went to the ER after having them >12 hours. They gave her an injection of chlorpromazine, and they stopped.
I inhale completely – that is, to the point that I can’t force any more air into my lungs. Then I hold it for a long long time. The attempted hiccup spasms can’t successfully spasm because I’ve got that muscle stretched so far. After a couple of tries, they quit. Wait for awhile to confirm, then exhale.
Since becoming an adult, I’ve found that the only time I get hiccups is when there is something stuck in my throat. I’ve thus found that drinking liquid to wash it down ends the hiccups.
My dad, on the other hand, swears by hitting himself in the upper chest while burping at the same time as the next hiccup. It may take a couple tries, but it seems to always work for him.
I do something similar. I used to get hiccups a lot in college after a night of beer drinking, and my roommate taught me his method. Long slow deep breaths in, then long slow deep breaths out (no holding it in between) and just repeat until they’re gone, which usually doesn’t take more than a few minutes.
This, but I also keep my epiglottis open and hold the air in by keeping my diaphragm flexed–or tensed, or whatever the word is for what I’m doing with it. It works more quickly if I start right after the first hiccup. The longer I wait, the more difficult the remedy becomes.
However, having someone gently tug on your earlobes while you drink a pint of water is surprisingly effective, too.
I’ve also had some luck drinking a pint of water from the ‘back’ side of the glass. You have to kind of arch your neck while tilting the glass forward.
I also do a variant on breathing. I merely take the deepest breath I can without deliberately forcing myself to draw more air in, and then hold it slightly past the point it become uncomfortable - for me, that’s about a minute. I almost never get hiccups while holding my breath, and for me the breath holding resets the reflex and I rarely get them after I do hold my breath.
Throughout my entire life, every single case of hiccups I’ve suffered has been 100% vanquished by a few over-stuffed spoons of smooth peanut butter. You cannot wait to fully swallow the previous spoon before jamming in another mouthful! That’s what so many people who try the peanut butter cure don’t seem to know. Without that, it just won’t work. The over-stuffing pushes your palate and other pieces of anatomy into unusual and mildly stressful positions. That’s the key. (Ooops! IANAD) Might want to have someone with you in the unlikely case of choking (the stuff is highly malleable, after all).
I always have a big glass of milk ready once the hiccups are in remission to clear down all that mass.
I only get hiccups when I’m drunk, and the minute I get hiccups I know that it’s time to go home. My first cure is always to hold my breath as long as possible and kind of swallow up the hiccups that occur in that time. Do it three or four times in a row, and most of my hiccups are gone. But I was once at a party where I got a drinking induced hiccup that I couldn’t get rid of, and the best friend of my mother, Bärbel, had a special cure for me: she told me to do a headstand and let me drink a big glass of water in one go. Alas, it worked!
a friend of mine did just that - the last time he was over at our hourse and got the hiccups … worked for him, drinking from the distal side of the glass (over the kitchen sink)
As kids, when you had a sibling with hiccups a fun thing to do was to approach them while they were unaware, and suddenly scream BOOO! in their face. Being startled often got rid of their hiccups and gave the added bonus of plausible deniability afterwards when confronted by annoyed parents…hey, I was just trying to help my brother get over his hiccups and as you can see it worked.
Meditation (at least, that’s what I call it; it may not be technically meditation) works for me about 75 percent of the time. You know that scene in Ghostbusters where the villain told the guys to choose The Destructor, and Dan Ackroyd told them all to clear their minds? And then one of them accidentally thought of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man? That. I try to clear my mind, keep from thinking of anything at all, lest an evil being manifest and destroy New York (not really, but you get what I’m saying). The longer I can sustain it, the higher the likelihood of success.
I take hiccups seriously, because I have a phobia of being one of those people who get hiccups and they don’t go away, like the linked OP story of the man who had hiccups for 68 years. There was a story on the news a few years back about a local young man who had had hiccups for many years. His family was affluent and they took him to a number of doctors, but nobody was able to do anything for him.
So when I get hiccups I nip that shiznit in the bud. I have a cure for it which works for me every time, and you can do it anywhere you can get ahold of a container of water: drink as much of the water as you can at one time while your ears are plugged tight. Granted, not so easy by yourself, but it’s doable- I block my ears with my thumbs and hold a cup, glass or water bottle between my pinkies and ring fingers to tip it back. Of course, you can just get help if you have someone you both are fine with having them block your ears for you (it’s better if you control the water flow yourself).
Yeah, a teaspoon of sugar is what I learned as a kid, and it seems to work on me, though I haven’t had reason to do it in many, many years, possibly a couple decades.
Long time since I had hiccups and longer since a stubborn case. In the end it has always been holding my breath that worked, although not always on the first try. Other methods, sugar, drinking cold water, drinking hot water, drinking from the wrong side of the glass (which is a confusing description that followed literally leaves you with hiccups and a wet shirt) all have worked once but not the next time. Holding my breath, even if it takes a couple of tries has been reliable for me.