Why do people hicup?

Answer 1

Hicup is an involuntary spasm of the diaphragm...

The sudden rush of air into the lungs causes the glottis to close, creating the "hic" noise,

Answer 2

For years very little was known about hiccups and even less was written about them. Today that's changed. We still don't know jack, but scientists have explained this to us at length.

Here's what we know. When you hiccup, your diaphragm and nearby muscles convulse, causing you to briefly gulp air. Within 35 milliseconds the glottis (the opening at the top of the air passage) slams shut, producing the characteristic "hic."

If you're able to stifle the hiccup right away, great. But if you hiccup more than seven times you'd better settle in for the long haul. Once in hiccup mode you typically will hiccup 63 times or more. Maybe a lot more. The hiccup record, last time I checked, was 57 years.

Hiccups are commonly caused by distention of the stomach, which you get if you eat too much, drink carbonated beverages, or swallow too much air. This suggests hiccup as a sequela to boozing may be more the result of fizzy mixers than alcohol itself. Or else you just slurp.

Lots of other things can cause hiccups too, some of them pretty scary. Skimming through a long list, I see skull fracture, epilepsy, diabetes mellitus, myocardial infarction, tuberculosis, meningitis, bowel obstruction, and ulcerative colitis.

But it's not always, or even usually, so bad. A 27-year-old man complained that he'd been hiccuping for four days. The doctor looked into the guy's ear and saw a hair tickling the eardrum. The hair having been washed out, the hiccups stopped.

Why do we hiccup? I don't know, and as far as I can tell, neither does anyone else. Unlike gagging, sneezing, etc., hiccups serve no known useful function. Some speculate that hiccups "may represent a vestigial remnant of a primitive reflex whose functional or behavioral significance is now lost," as one researcher put it.

Or maybe they're just, you know, hiccups--an accidental reflex triggered by a stimulus to (usually) the vagus or phrenic nerves. This travels up the line to a nerve control center that for some reason sends out a "commence hiccup" impulse via the phrenic nerve.

The vagus and phrenic nerves go all over, which explains why so many things cause hiccups. For example, a 16-year-old girl began hiccuping after receiving a blow to the jaw. A brain scan found that a blood vessel was pressing against the vagus nerve in her neck. Surgeons inserted a Teflon spacer between the nerve and the blood vessel, and the hiccuping stopped. When the spacer later fell out the hiccuping resumed.

Answer 3

The part to blame is your diaphragm (say: die-uh-fram). This is a dome-shaped muscle at the bottom of your chest, and all hiccups start here.

The diaphragm almost always works perfectly. When you inhale, it pulls down to help pull air into the lungs. When you exhale, it pushes up to help push air out of the lungs. But sometimes the diaphragm becomes irritated. When this happens, it pulls down in a jerky way, which makes you suck air into your throat suddenly. When the air rushing in hits your voice box, you're left with a big hiccup.

Some things that irritate the diaphragm are eating too quickly or too much, an irritation in the stomach or the throat, or feeling nervous or excited. Almost all cases of the hiccups last only a few minutes. Some cases of the hiccups can last for days or weeks, but this is very unusual, and it's usually a sign of another medical problem.

Answer 4

A hiccup is an involuntary spasmodic contraction of the muscle at the base of the lungs (diaphragm) followed by the rapid closure of the vocal cords. Usually, hiccups last for a few hours or, occasionally, a day or two. However, chronic hiccups are ones that continue for an extended period of time. Episodes that last for more than two days and less than a month are sometimes called persistent hiccups. On rare occasions, hiccups persist even longer than a month or recur frequently over an extended period of time. The longest recorded episode of these chronic hiccups lasted 60 years.

Answer 5

They say when kids hicup it means they are growing.

Answer 6

when you hicup ur diaphram (under ur stomach) is irritated so it jumps up which pushes air up ur throat to make a sound just like when you have an itch and you automaticly scratch it

Answer 7

Hiccups are caused by muscle spasms in the diaphragm often caused by eating fast, swallowing air, etc.

Answer 8

To wind up on Inside Edition every night for two weeks?

Answer 9

Hiccups are a spasm of the muscles of the diaphragm.

Answer 10

Their diaphram in the middle of the chest flips up and makes you hic up