No one exactly knows why people hiccup

NEW YORK: Maybe it was because when the waiter asked, “Still or sparkling?” you chose sparkling. It could have also been that you were ravenous and ate a little too much. Or, possibly, it was your ex, who happened to be dining at the same restaurant and stood a little too long over your table making awkward small talk. All of these things, hic, might cause spasms, hic, in your diaphragm, hic.

Referred to in the medical literature as singultus (from the Latin for gasp or sob), hiccups are familiar to anyone who has ever taken a breath.

Most hiccups are benign and last only a few minutes or hours. But sometimes hiccups are indicative of a more serious health issue, particularly when they recur or don’t go away for days, weeks or years. Beyond being embarrassing, the muscle contractions can be physically exhausting. They can interrupt sleep and make it hard to eat. Approximately 4,000 people in the US are admitted to the hospital every year for hiccups.

The patient with the longest recorded case, according to Guinness World Records , was Charles Osborne of Anthon, Iowa, who hiccuped for 68 years straight. He claimed it started while attempting to weigh a hog before slaughtering it.

Doctors say there are as many causes for hiccups as there are crazy remedies, including tugging on your tongue, standing on your head and swallowing granulated sugar. Some actually work. Others are more likely just entertainment for friends and family who watch while you try to cure yourself.

Everyone gets the hiccups, and yet they still aren’t well understood. Scientists do know that when you hiccup , there is a sudden, involuntary contraction of the diaphragm as well as the muscles between the ribs. This causes a rapid intake of air hic which provokes a quick and noisy closure of the glottis (up). The diaphragm is a dome-like sheet of muscle that separates the chest cavity from the abdominal cavity, whereas the glottis is an opening between the vocal folds in the larynx that snaps shut when we are eating to keep food from entering the lungs.

The muscle spasm followed by the quick closing of the larynx is what causes the characteristic bodily jerk and relax sequence. When babies hiccup in utero, one theory is they are basically doing lung calisthenics to prepare for breathing once they are born. Another theory is that hiccups are a holdover from our amphibian ancestors, as the motor pattern of hiccups is similar to that of animals like frogs, which need to rapidly close off different respiratory pathways depending on whether they are breathing air or water.

Experts tend to agree that there is a hiccup reflex arc, or circuit, that includes the vagus and phrenic nerves. Together these nerves extend from the brain stem into the abdomen, with branches that reach the diaphragm and many internal organs including the stomach, intestines, spleen, liver, lungs and kidneys. “If you have irritation anywhere along that circuit, you can get the hiccups,” said Mark Fox, a professor of gastroenterology at the University of Zurich and an author of a comprehensive literature review on hiccups.