Hey, did you know that surfing the Net is now against the law if you are under 16 years old?! Ha—scared you didn’t I? Of course, I’m just pulling your leg, but if you had the hiccups just then, I might have gotten rid of them for you! So what’s the topic of discussion on today’s Science Mysteries…Explained? We’re going to try to answer that age-old question of…How do you stop the hiccups?

To start with, what are hiccups really? Why do they occur and how can we stop them? A hiccup occurs when the muscle in your diaphragm start to spasm or tighten uncontrollably. Your diaphragm is the large muscle that raises and lowers your lungs during breathing. It is found right between your ribs and your guts. When these muscles spasm (the medical tern for “spazz out”), air rushes into your lungs. At this point, the tiny flap that keeps food from entering your lungs when you eat snaps closed, causing the sound you hear. Often hiccups seem to arise for no particular reason. Other times they start if you eat or drink too quickly, if you are sobbing, or any other time you get a lot of air into your stomach. No one really knows if they have a purpose, other than to embarrass us of course!

That brings us to the answer to the question for today’s hiccup blog—How do you stop the hiccups? A lot of times, the answer is, you can’t. They just need to stop on their own. You might try relaxing your muscles, or have someone scare you, or even eating a tablespoon full of sugar… sometimes these methods work, but often they don’t. Usually hiccups go away after a few minutes on their own, but sometimes they don’t. There are some people who have hiccups for days, weeks, or even months. Good grief! For these unlucky people, a new scientific device has just been developed that may cure their hiccups once and for all. This invention uses a cup and two electrodes (devices that carry electricity to and from your skin). When you drink the water, a circular path is created for electricity to run along. The electricity interrupts the signal that is telling you to keep hiccupping, and the hiccups stop. Pretty (hic) cool (hic) huh? Pass the (hic) sugar please!