A straw to stop hiccups
What’s your home remedy for hiccups? Holding your breath, drinking water upside down, having a fright, giving up and accepting your fate as a permanent hiccupper?
Have no fear, helps is now at hand – US researchers have come to the rescue, with a straw their research shows can stop transient hiccups.
The straw is a rigid tube with a pressure valve at the base. Created and patented by one of the researchers, and developed commercially with the help of a Kickstarter campaign, it’s designed to be difficult to suck water through.
Users are instructed to suck around 100 millilitres of water through the straw (or 50 millilitres for children), noting they will encounter some resistance. When they suck the water up, the motion makes the user contract their diaphragm and then close their epiglottis (flap of cartilage located in the throat behind the tongue and in front of the larynx), forcing their hiccups to stop.
“The hiccups are usually expected to stop instantly in one to two attempts,” write the researchers in a paper published in JAMA Network Open.
