Licking that sickening hic, hic, hic…
LONDON: For most people, hiccups are merely a temporary and occasionally embarrassing inconvenience that pass within minutes.
But in a small minority of cases, they can last for days – even months.
Such hiccupping may indicate a deeper medical problem – which is why the NHS recommends people seek medical advice if their hiccups last for more than 48 hours.
Hiccups are an automatic reflex: during an episode your diaphragm (the muscle under your lungs that helps you breathe) contracts. Immediately after, the top of your windpipe (the glottis) closes, making a “hic” sound. But while we know the physical mechanism, scientists have still not fathomed what it’s for.
Last October, the journal Anesthesia and Analgesia reported that the three most popular (though controversial) current theories all suggest hiccupping has primitive roots.
These are: they developed to stop us swallowing amniotic fluid as babies in the womb; or as a reflex that prepares the foetus for breathing air when it is born; or that they are even an evolutionary leftover from our aquatic forebears who breathed through gills.
There is often no obvious reason why we get normal, short-term hiccups but some people’s are triggered by specific stimuli such as eating, drinking, stress and strong emotions such as excitement.
The causes of prolonged hiccups, however, can be a symptom of serious underlying illness or injury. For example, the longest recorded case in medical history blighted the life of Charles Osborne, an Iowa farmer who hiccupped continuously for 68 years.
Aged 29, he fell over while working on his farm. Upon standing up, he began hiccupping, and continued for the brain stem, inhibiting the hiccup response”. His hiccups stopped completely in 1990, for no apparent reason. A year later, aged 97, Osborne died.
More recently, in 2006, Christopher Sands, an English singer based in the US, began to hiccup once every two seconds for 12 hours a day. He would pass out from lack of oxygen to the brain and it stopped him living a normal life.
Sands’s hiccuping was only cured in 2010 when brain surgeons removed the culprit – a tumour deep in his brain stem. The op enabled Sands to return to playing guitar and singing.
Hiccups can also have psychiatric causes – and it is this wide variety of causes that helps explain why medics have struggled to develop treatment.
Some of the latest ideas include pulling your tongue to trigger a gag reflex, or a cold compress to the face. Don’t hold your breath for longer than a short time.