127 Family Cures
Was going through the old comics and found one that was left out! A few hours late for Throwback Thursday, but this comic was drawn over a year ago. It’s crazy to think Carbon Dating has been going for so long already.
…Mitch hasn’t changed one bit.
Leave a comment and share your family’s favorite hiccup cure!
↓ Transcript
ROB
It didn't work, I'm out of ideas.
KATE
Me too, that's what my family did for hiccups. It always worked.
MITCH
Here, plug your ears and drink this upside down.
ROB
It worked! My hiccup are gone!
MITCH
What hiccups.
It didn't work, I'm out of ideas.
KATE
Me too, that's what my family did for hiccups. It always worked.
MITCH
Here, plug your ears and drink this upside down.
ROB
It worked! My hiccup are gone!
MITCH
What hiccups.
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Spoonful of sugar. Guessing it’s a placebo effect, but this has never not cured my hiccups.
Wow, that is exactly the same for me, too! It was the remedy my mother always suggested, and (taking a moment to revise wording to remove implication of causality….) my hiccups always ceased right afterward! 🙂
I tried drinking water upside down and being startled, and those sometimes seemed to work, but sometimes they clearly did not.
Like I said, somewhere else, I’m not diabetic yet, just hovering on the edges, and finally smartening up, so the sugar thing is no longer in my repertoire. I never found it all that reliable… for me.
Mostly, I just take a full glass of cool/cold water and start slo-o-o-o-owly drinking it down. I try to have water going down my throat at a slow but steady rate for as long as my breath holds out. It usually works.
When I’m in the car or otherwise don’t have water accessible, and am nevertheless rudely assaulted by hiccups, I do the breath-holding thing. But… and this is a biggie… for me, it makes all the difference to NOT suck in a big breath before beginning the hold. Instead, breathe OUT as far as possible (which also strongly engages the diaphragm), and hold from there. With the diaphragm up and the chest squeezed down, there’s minimal space in there and the time I can hold is much reduced, but it still usually works the first or second try. MUCH more effective than taking a huge breath before holding. If it’s not the diaphragm, it’s probably the very rapid increase in CO2 percentage, with little to dilute it.
I’m speculating of course, but it’s plausible, semi-knowledgeable speculation, so it’s OK.
Ahem.
>Hic!<
Oh, s**t.
One of my faves!
My family just did the classics:
1) Hold your breath for 30 seconds
2) Drink some water
Neither seem very reliable at all.
Not a family cure, not real sure where I heard of it first, but my preferred method is holding my breath. It can be tough to hold through a hiccup, but once you can do that, it ALWAYS works for me.
Scarin’ it outta you by waving a very large kitchen knife in a menacing fashion. Hiccups weren’t the only thing that got rid of though…
Beer works. Absolutely. If not drink more beer!
Stop. Sit. place hands over mouth and nose. Breath in. Breath out. Intentionally.
After 30 seconds my hiccups are gone.
(Although the beer sounds better lol)
Since I was a kid I had always had success just holding my breath for a bit. About two months ago I had some weird flu that included hiccups. That went on for two days. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. Could barely stomach a half-glass of water. It was painful. Wife suggests a giant scoop of creamy peanut butter. I had always been skeptical and why would I try when the breathing thing had always worked before. Heaping teaspoon of peanut butter and 10 hours of relief. Thank you, George Washington Carver! Suck it, Salk! Think you so great with your polio vaccines! Well, actually, I’m rather grateful for the no polio thing. But the peanut butter deal was way out of left field unexpected and welcome.
Once upon a time, I was walking with a friend late at night past a dark yard full of creepy bushes. I’d been hiccuping for nearly a half hour. My friend, in the middle of his sentence, grabbed my arm and screamed bloody murder in my face, then went right back to his train of thought. I nearly wet myself as I fell into the creepy bush, but my hiccups were gone!
Later that year, my father got food poisoning and vomited so forcefully that he tweaked his diaphragm. He hiccuped for the next four days. He hiccuped through a 12 hour drive from Buffalo to Chicago, my grandfather’s funeral, and the drive home. Relief only came after visiting the ER and getting a prescription for muscle relaxants.
Sugar is no match for sheer terror and heavy duty prescription medications.
Drinking from the far side of a glass was a good one. Also, holding your breath while swallowing 3 times. What I found, however, was that all cures focused around one thing: focusing on something other than hiccups until you forget. Thus, I deemed hiccups fake and a placebo of their own. Knowing the placebo effect often counteracts it. I haven’t had more than 3 hiccups in a row since!!
Basically my method is deciding to not have Hiccups.
Likely from breath control for singing but really its just focusing on the muscles that generally spasm to cause hiccups and focusing on them to make them stop doing that.
All I know is my GF really hates me cause she can never get them to stop
I was told a shock cured hiccups, so I put my fingers in an electric socket. It’s rubbish, doesn’t do a thing. Doesn’t help with the pacemaker either.
Late to the comic, but what works for me is sipping a glass of water, quick small sips for as long as I can before needing another breath. It keeps the diaphragm contracted so that it can’t spasm in hiccups. I haven’t had it fail yet.
I’ve trained in martial arts for over half my life. One of the practiced components was controlling my breathing. Control of my diaphragm muscle developed. I can hiccup on command, but otherwise I haven’t gotten hiccups in years.
A hiccup is often caused by swallowing enough air to have a reaction but not enough to trigger a burp.
The common thread in home remedies is they make you swallow a little air and expel it — and then the hiccups go away. Everybody is a little different so the remedy that works for one family often doesn’t work for anyone else, but they all have that one thing in common.
Take big gulps of water, then burp (some people don’t need the water) — and you’re cured.
I usually hold my breath with conscious concentration on maintaining a stiff, motionless diaphragm (thank you vocal training) and I can usually get it to relax that way, same as with a cramp.
When that isn’t working, water also helps, probably because other muscles around the diaphragm work to swallow and slosh the stomach, and again it’s a lot like working out cramps (which are often caused by lack of water and stretching anyway…)
My family always swore by a heaping teaspoon of peanut butter.
I can’t pinpoint the issue, but years ago the New England Journal of Medicine tested folk hiccup cures, and I recall that the most consistently effective one was dry-swallowing a spoonful of sugar. It has worked for me numerous times. I’ve also found that a large gulp of a sugary drink (e.g. orange juice) can be similarly useful, and easier to acquire when out and about.
For what it is worth:
Upon hiccuping, force a burp. Usually that’s that.
If you need further treatment, take a deep breath, & hold your breath for as long as you can. Then a few seconds more. Longer! Now breathe all the way out, & inhale again, & hold that for as long as you can.
Job done.