The exact cause of hiccups is still a mystery, but here’s what we know about a cure
The best hiccups cure might simply be distracting a person for a few minutes until they go away
By Kevin Loria
Everyone grows up with their own family hiccups cure. There’s trying to scare the hiccup victim, holding one’s breath, or drinking a glass of water upside-down from the far side of the glass.
As a kid, my family used the water-drinking technique, which was excellent at making a mess and seemed to be about as good as any other hiccups treatment out there. And actually, that might be the case.
That’s because there’s no single science-backed hiccups treatment, according to Gregory Levitin, an assistant professor of otolaryngology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Health System.
“We don’t understand why hiccups come and why they go,” Levitin said. “But anything that has a distracting quality would be a positive experience,” especially if that distraction provides some other form of stimulation.
While scientists don’t know the true cause or best treatment for hiccups, they do know what they are. And there are a few strategies Levitin and other otolayngologists — ear, nose, and throat doctors — recommend for getting hiccups to end and for preventing them in the first place.