One hiccup remedy: Gulp, don’t sip, a glass of water
Q: I learned my go-to hiccup remedy from my first child when he was just a nursing infant. He got hiccups fairly often, and they would always go away when my milk let down while he was nursing. At that point, he went from sipping to swallowing rapidly and continuously.
So I tried treating hiccups by drinking a glass of water quickly, swallowing continuously without pausing between swallows. That worked. The standard “drink a glass of water” advice doesn’t work if you just sip it. I try to be careful not to swallow air along with the water because sometimes swallowing air triggers hiccups for me. My son is 40 now, and I’ve been using this remedy all this time.
A: Thank you for sharing your thoughtful observations.
We suspect that most hiccup remedies work by stimulating the vagus nerve. This network of nerves collects information from the body’s major organs starting above the throat and reaching down to the colon.
Many home remedies for hiccups appear to stimulate this important nerve. Swallowing granulated sugar has been shown to help (New England Journal of Medicine, Dec. 23, 1971). Presumably, continuous swallowing as you describe has a similar effect on the vagus nerve.
Q: At a Zoom party last night, the topic of vitamin D came up. I take 5,000 IU a day, which keeps my vitamin D levels just where my internist wants them to be. Multivitamins like One A Day 50+ have 700 IU of vitamin D. My internist said that is not enough for me.
My friend said he thought low vitamin D levels make you more susceptible to
COVID-19. Is that true?
A: Researchers at the University of Chicago investigated this question (JAMA Network Open, Sept. 3, 2020). They examined data on patients who were tested for COVID-19 at the hospital. Among them, a group of 489 patients had had their vitamin D levels measured last year before the pandemic began.
Nineteen percent of those who had levels characterized as deficient had positive
COVID-19 tests compared with 12% of those with adequate vitamin D levels. Previous research indicated that vitamin D supplementation might reduce viral respiratory infections. Many of these are caused by coronaviruses other than SARSCoV-2.
Q: Will getting the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine as an adult help protect me from COVID-19? Are there any reasons not to get this shot? I had mumps and German measles as a youngster. I am now 70 years young.
A: People like you, who are over 65, are at greater risk of serious complications from the coronavirus. We understand your desire for protection.
There is a hypothesis that the MMR vaccine might help reduce the chance that young children would get seriously ill from COVID-19 (Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, June 5, 2020). Because the idea of boosting innate immunity is plausible, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are coordinating an international placebo-controlled trial. They are recruiting health care workers as volunteers to test whether the MMR vaccine can protect against COVID-19 or reduce its severity. Until there are data, however, we would not recommend that you get an MMR shot to prevent COVID-19.