Monday I was watching the St. Louis Cardinal game on TV and I started getting the hiccups. I haven't had hiccups for quite some time. They went on for about 2 minutes and ended, thankfully! It made me wonder what can a person do to stop them once they begin?

I heard holding your breath will do it. I have also heard that drinking more water will end hiccups as well. I tried the breath holding and it seemed to work.

So, I did some research and found out that hiccups are little more than a reflex, like the way your knee jerks when a doctor taps it with a hammer. They result when the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain to the abdomen, is irritated. And the vagus lets you know by tweaking the phrenic nerve, which leads to the diaphragm, the muscle below the lungs that helps you breathe. The diaphragm then spasms, causing the “hic” sound true to the condition’s name. Experts say hiccups are usually more a nuisance than anything else.

I also found out that on June 13, 1922 a guy by the name of Charles Osborne started to hiccup and continued doing so for some 435 million times, consecutively. He was 98 and died 11 months after the hiccups finally stopped in 1991. My question is who was the person who counted all of those hiccups?

Anyway, is there a real remedy for hiccups? What do you do when you get them?

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