9 Strange Ways to Get Rid of Hiccups
When “Boo!”, drinking upside down, and holding your breath don’t work, here are nine ways to get rid of continuous hiccups.
Bruce and Jeanne Lubin
Hiccup Hand Trick
Give your lungs a double dose of carbon dioxide: Hold your cupped hands over your mouth and nose and take regular breaths. This will interfere with hiccups as your body compensates for the extra CO2 in your blood.
Peanut Butter for Hiccups
Here’s a hiccup cure much yummier than that old “drink pickle juice” remedy: Eat a spoonful of peanut butter. Chewing it slowly interrupts your breathing pattern just enough to get it back on track, stopping your hiccups in seconds.
See also: How to Get Rid of Bad Breath Naturally
Ice Pack Hiccup Cure
Prepare an ice pack and hold it over your diaphragm, located just beneath your rib cage and just above your abdomen. Keep it there to cool the muscle until the spasms (and your hiccups) stop.
How Drinking Water Can Help
Reset your diaphragm’s rhythm by drinking 10 quick gulps from a glass of water. When you gulp quickly and repeatedly, you modify your breaths and distract the vagus nerve from sending its hiccup signals, calming the spasms.
Help the Hiccups Go Down
Here’s a hiccup cure that will go down easy: Eat a teaspoonful of sugar! Scientists believe that it somehow helps to regulate the spasmodic muscle impulses in the diaphragm that cause hiccups.
Stop Hiccups with Ice Cream
This is sure to be everyone’s favorite hiccup cure: ice cream! Just like eating sugar, it can help stop the spasms, but the cold also helps. Try eating in some steady gulps, and that will help even more.
A Slip of the Tongue
Look away from any strangers you might offend, then stick out your tongue! Use your fingers to pull it outside of your mouth. This will alter your breathing and reopen your vocal cords, stifling the spasms in your diaphragm.
Hot Sauce for Hiccups
This remedy uses a secret ingredient that is not for the faint of heart: Tabasco sauce. Shake a few drops onto a teaspoon and slurp it down. The burn on your tongue (and in your eyes and nose) redirects your body’s focus from the hiccups to the fiery feelings in your mouth.
Original Hiccup Cure
Here’s an old-fashioned hiccup cure to try when nothing else helps. Carefully insert a Q-tip into your mouth and gently dab the back of the throat under the soft palate. You’re trying to hit the uvula, which requires good aim, a diagram, or both! If this doesn’t work, try putting sugar under the tongue and letting it dissolve, or swallowing a tablespoon of lemon juice.
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Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
About the Author
Bruce Lubin and Jeanne Bossolina-Lubin are the proud parents of three boys and more than a dozen books. After saving thousands per year using everyday tips and simple lifehacks, they started their own business in the hopes of sharing their knowledge with others. They have been known to go into their friends’ refrigerators to turn their eggs upside down so that they last longer.