My wife swears by a teaspoon of sugar chased by a teaspoon of vinegar.
I would rather have hiccups than drink vinegar.
I take a deep breath and hold it for 15-20 seconds. I intensely will them away during that time, or so I like to think.
I’m another person who uses the sugar treatment. It works consistently enough that mom would nag me when I got the hiccups around her. (I didn’t like it)
The breathing trick has never worked for me. I 'll hold my breath till I’m dizzy and they still won’t go away.
I had someone do the scare tactic on me once. It was strange - it felt less like the hiccups were cured, and more like they had been scared into hiding!
Here are techniques that usually work for me:
Take a large drink of water, and hold it in your mouth. Plug your ears and then swallow without swallowing any air. (kinda slide it down your throat) May take a couple repeats.
If that fails, then a large tablespoon of peanut butter.
If that fails, stand on your head against the wall for 30 seconds. (have an assistant to help you with positioning)
I rarely get to the 3rd one, usually if the water fails, the PB does the trick.
I stick my finger down my throat.
Australia’s Dr Karl, in his conclusion to a two part series on hiccups reports, in “A hiccup cure that really works”, that digital rectal massage is the answer. He cites the work of 2006 Ig Noble Prize in Medicine winner Dr Francis M Fesmire. The doctor subsequently offered another, possibly more popular, cure to New Scientist - orgasm.
An orgasm results in incredible stimulation of the vagus nerve. From now on, I will be recommending sex — culminating with orgasm — as the cure-all for intractable hiccups.
I’ve never had this fail and I’ve taught it to many people. Bite down on a spoon handle. Anything like it works. The idea is to keep your mouth open while drinking a liquid. The idea is to swallow while your mouth is open wider than normal. there’s something about the unnaturalness of the act that resets the brain. I don’t know if it’s swallowing with mouth farther open or what.
You don’t need props to hold your mouth open but it helps.
interesting and good anecdotes …
q:
can we distill all those into a “what do they technically achieve in common” finding on the macro level? …
e.g. they relax the diaphragm by doing xyz (swallowing a liquid seems to be top of the list ) … but to ge honest, the peanutbutter thing is a real curveball here hence my request