hic hic hiccups

Hiccups for 60 years?

Whether they last for 6 minutes or 6 decades, the complexity of hiccups still baffles us.

By Robert Shmerling M.D., Harvard Health Publications

If you Bing “hiccups” you’ll find lots of supposed cures for this annoying, but usually fast-passing condition—one site lists 250 of them! You might find the story of a man in Iowa who had the hiccups for 60 years and couldn't shake them. One thing you won’t find, though, is a good explanation for why we hiccup. The truth is, after pondering the question for thousands of years, no one really knows. (Hippocrates, the Greek physician who lived in the fourth century B.C., thought liver inflammation was to blame. It’s not. But we still don’t know what is.) 

Hiccupping is a more complex reflex than it might seem: A sudden contraction or spasm of the diaphragm and the muscles between the ribs makes you inhale quickly and involuntarily. It ends with “glottic closure”—the space in the throat near the vocal cords snaps shut, producing the typical hiccup sound. The technical term for hiccups—singultus—comes from a Latin word (singult) that means catching your breath while crying, which seems like a pretty good description of the sound of hiccupping.

Making hiccups go away

In most cases, hiccups seem to serve no purpose and go away on their own, usually after 30 or more hiccups. Any of the following may cause a short bout of hiccups:

• An overly full stomach (due to too much food, too much alcohol or too much air in the stomach)
• Sudden changes in temperature—either outside your body or internally
• Smoking cigarettes
• Excitement, stress or other heightened emotions

Of the many, many purported ways to get rid of hiccups, here are a few that you can do at home, and that are logical, considering the muscles and tissues involved in hiccuping:

• Stimulating the nasopharynx, or the upper most region of the throat, by pulling on your tongue; swallowing granulated sugar; gargling with water; sipping ice water; drinking from the far side of a glass; or biting on a lemon.
• Stimulating the skin that covers the spinal nerves near the neck by tapping or rubbing the back of the neck.
• Stimulating the pharynx, or back of the throat, by gently poking it with a long cotton swab.
• Stimulating the uvula, the cone-like tissue that hangs from the very back of the top of your mouth, again by touching it with a cotton swab.
• Interrupting your normal respiratory cycle by holding your breath, breathing into a paper bag (which increases the amount of carbon dioxide you inhale), gasping in fright, or pulling your knees up to chest and leaning forward.
• Distracting your mind from the fact that you’re hiccuping.

 ~taken from MSN Health & Fitness

As for me... lying down always works. Ive tried everything else; drink water, touch the back of your ears, hold your breath.... but to no avail.