[notz]

O my goodness! I woke myself up this morning with them.........and they haven't gone away all day! I've gagged while drinking a couple of times today. Inhaling while swallowing doesn't go together. Trying to hide them while talking on the phone just ends up with at least one huge, loud guttural explosion at some point!

If I hold my breath anymore I will die. No more water, no more upside down drinking of anything.

I did try the bag breathing. I was getting dizzy and thought it would be more fun to sit in the front yard with a bag over my head for passers by. That's when the neighbor's kid tried to scare me, I may have to kill him. He didn't even know I had hiccups but was indeed successful scaring me but, alas, the hiccups remain. Little bugger.

My sweet love brought home a helium balloon that said "I love you". Nice sentiment for a crazy day. But guess what? Her thought was for me to inhale the helium from the balloon to cure the hiccups. Guess what it doesn't! But we laughed and laughed as the clown in me had a field day with my Daffy Duck voice.

So, anybody want to share hiccup cures? I'm game to listen and might even try some.

[VickiesPath]

I can tell you how to get rid of them if you want.

Hiccups are caused by a spasm in that muscle-diaphram-thingy that supports your lungs. Since it's a spasm, you can reverse it and stop it by doing this:

Lie down across your bed so your head and arms are hanging down from the side of the bed and your middle, right below the ribs, is stretched as much as you can stretch it. In other words, try to make yourself as tall as you can be, with most of the stretch focused on that area right below the ribs.

Take some very slow, deep breaths in through your mouth and hold them to the count of 8. The purse your lips and slowly blow them out to the count of 20. Keep doing this over and over, relaxing the muscles along your torso as you do it. If you can't hold the air that long, you can adjust the timing.

Trying to get rid of hiccups tends to make us more tense and frustrated each time we fail. So that makes them worse because that muscle gets tighter. The key is to relax that area of your body.

I hope this works for you.

[Amanda_1981]

the only thing that ever works for me when I have them really bad is to literally swallow a taplespoon of pure sugar. I don't know why or how, but it really does work! (for me anyway, it does). Hope yours go away soon!

[serafim_etal]

I was going to say the "sugar cure"...Amanda beat me to it!

[(JD)]

Hope you're well today.
Hiccups can often be abated by massaging the diaphram, as that's what's spasming.
Hiccups can mean allergy, btw.

[Yoda]

Thorazine works well for hiccups. I worked in open heart recovery and a few times folks would get persistent hiccups that would go on for hours. Not a good thing when you have just had your sternum sawed open then wired back together. They were pretty uncomfortable until the Thorazine took effect.