I rarely get them, in fact I cant remember the last time I did. My daughter however gets them a lot and although SHE doesn’t find them funny WE do since she has such a cute tiny sounding hiccup.
She’s tried so many different ways to get them to stop and one that seems to have better success for her is having someone ask her some trivia of sorts. Apparently it distracts your brain thinking of an answer and can act as a bit of a reset or “reboot” so to speak.
Luckily for her they may last several minutes and then go away, however for some, they can last for hours or even days.
The technical name for a hiccup is a synchronous diaphragmatic flutter (SDF) or singultus. Singultus derives from the Latin “singult” which means “the act of catching one’s breath while sobbing”. Centuries in Old England folklore, they were thought to be caused by interacting with Elves!
The world record is held by Charles Osbourne, a man in the US who was lifting a heavy pig on a farm and fell breaking a small blood vessel in his brain. Doctors later figured that vessel is somehow partly responsible for containing the urge to hiccup. So at the age of 28 he started to hiccup, for the first few years, about 40 times a minute and then it was around 20 times a minute and continued that way for 68 YEARS!
Imagine hiccupping (is that a word?) every 3 seconds. Although he said he lived a pretty normal life getting married, having kids, joining the Navy and lived to the ripe old age of 97!
Towards the latter part of his life he had to blend all his food into liquid as he wasn’t able to swallow food fast enough between hiccups.
Strangely one day he woke up and the hiccups were gone! They stopped and doctors had no idea why. Sadly a year later he passed away.
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