There is a foolproof method to get rid of hiccups. It’s not pretty

Each week, Good Weekend’s how-to column shares expert advice on how to navigate some of modern life’s big – and small – challenges. This week: How to cure hiccups.

“There is an effective cure, but it’s not pretty,” warns Dr Sarah Holper, neurologist at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and author of What’s Wrong with You? An Insider’s Guide to Your Insides.

Hiccups are a disruption in the rhythmic tightening and relaxing of the diaphragm during normal breathing. “The diaphragm is like a layer of ham – a meaty parachute – between the intestines and gut,” explains Holper. “When you breathe in, it flattens downwards, creating a vacuum that pulls air into your lungs. When you exhale, it relaxes upwards, the lungs shrink, and air is expelled.”

A hiccup happens when the diaphragm suddenly flattens at the wrong time in the breathing cycle, yanking air into the lungs. This “really startles” your vocal cords, which respond by “snapping shut, exactly 35 milliseconds after that sudden intake of air. That’s what creates the ‘hic’ sound.”

This diaphragm spasm is caused by an irritation of the vagus nerve. Vagus is Latin for “wandering”, and the vagus nerve wanders all over the body, from the  brainstem to eye muscles, eardrums, vocal cords, heart, lungs, diaphragm, stomach walls and intestines, all the way to the rectum. An irritation at any point – even a single hair tickling an eardrum – can cause hiccups.

Curing hiccups involves – bizarrely – more stimulation. Says Holper, “Like if a kid’s having a tantrum, you stop it by distracting them: if you flood the vagus nerve with other messages, it resets itself.” Press your eyeballs; induce a gag reflex; rub your earlobes. Or try the Valsalva manoeuvre – close your nose and mouth and forcefully “exhale”, as if blowing up a tight balloon or having a bowel movement.

Admittedly, it’s all a bit of an inexact science. But there is another way: a case study in the medical literature entitled Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage. “The author put on gloves – he really emphasised that – and performed a circumferential rectal massage with his finger. And it cured the hiccups.”

This result has been replicated and, apparently, there’s “plenty of anecdotal evidence” that it works. “Basically, the vagus nerve forgets about the hiccups,” concludes Holper. “It forgets about the diaphragm. It just thinks, ‘What is going on?!’ And then it resets very effectively.”

Both Holper and the literature suggest this procedure is best undertaken by medical professionals. For the rest of us, try the eyeballs, the earlobes or the old standby: a glass of cold water.

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