This Weird Straw Claims to Cure Hiccups Better Than Any Remedy You Know
Getting rid of hiccups is no easy feat. Once your diaphragm starts involuntarily spasming, there's little you can do to stop the ensuing "hupps" and "hics" other than wait it out.
If you want to speed up the process, you can always try holding your breath, drinking upside down, sucking on a lemon, or eating a spoonful of sugar, but as popular as these traditional hiccup 'cures' are, the advice is notoriously unreliable.
Although hiccups are nothing more than a minor inconvenience to most of us, for those that suffer hiccups regularly, hope could come in the form of a specialized straw recently invented by a neurologist.
The device is creatively named HiccAway, and if it looks like a Kickstarter product, that's because it is. However, in a newly published research letter in JAMA Network Open, survey results from 249 volunteers around the world indicate that 90 percent of the users think this thing works better than traditional remedies.
The straw has a mouthpiece at one end and a pressure valve at the other, which requires you to suck harder than you would through a normal straw. This pressure causes your diaphragm to contract, stopping the uncontrollable influxes of air which rhythmically slam your vocal cords shut and cause the classic sound of a hiccup.
