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There is a popular belief that scaring a hiccuping person would cure the hiccups:

  • This Straw Is Designed to Instantly Cure Hiccups

    Lots of folks will try to scare hiccups away with a shock or surprise.

  • Can a Scare Cure the Hiccups?

    The recent death of a Fort Hood U.S. Army soldier in Killeen, Texas, shows that a belief in the folk cure of scaring away hiccups can have tragic effects when taken to the extreme, but does the cure have any basis if administered within reason?

  • 9 Unusual Cures For The Hiccups

    Another remedy was to terrify the person inflicted. Perhaps this one grew out of the fact that many primitive people believed that hiccups were caused by demons entering the person and that the only way to get rid of them was to scare them to death. Sometimes this method actually works.

Is it true?

Laurel
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Quassnoi
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  • What would constitute proof? – Kyralessa Sep 15 '23 at 16:47
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    @Kyralessa: a research saying "we found evidence that it works" or "we didn't find evidence that it works". – Quassnoi Sep 15 '23 at 17:08
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    But how would you experiment on this? You'd need a way to induce hiccups. – Kyralessa Sep 16 '23 at 06:47
  • @Kyralessa: I wouldn't, I'm not a medical scientist. – Quassnoi Sep 16 '23 at 15:45
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    How would one experiment on this? – Kyralessa Sep 16 '23 at 15:52
  • @Kyralessa: it would be a good question for https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/, but I don't think this comments section is the right place for it. – Quassnoi Sep 16 '23 at 15:55
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    The point is, this doesn't appear to be amenable to research, because it's not possible to induce hiccups. A scientist couldn't just walk around waiting for passersby to hiccup so he could test cures on them. It might be possible to induce hiccups by tickling a nerve, as I've heard of such things causing sustained hiccupping before, but that seems unlikely to pass an ethics committee. And if tickling the nerve caused hiccupping, would any cure work except to stop tickling the nerve? So in sum, I don't think you're going to find any scientific work on this. – Kyralessa Sep 16 '23 at 15:58
  • @Kyralessa: you look like you know what you're talking about. Are you telling that hiccups and their cures are impossible to research? Could you please make it into a real answer, backing it up with reliable sources? If it's true, of course it counts as an answer as well. – Quassnoi Sep 16 '23 at 16:04
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    Startling, not scaring. It causes a tightening up and a sudden intake of breath. More "boo" and less "I see dead people" if that makes sense. – Kate Gregory Sep 18 '23 at 13:45
  • @KateGregory: thank you. English is not my first language. Please feel free to correct any mistakes in my posts. – Quassnoi Sep 18 '23 at 13:47
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    Also, it's not necessary to induce hiccups to test this. You teach groups techniques, ask them to use them as needed, and give them a way to report back if they try it and whether it worked, It would be a slow experiment (months or years) and not super accurate, but you could do it. The reason people haven't is that hiccups isn't medically important enough to spend money on curing. – Kate Gregory Sep 18 '23 at 13:47
  • @KateGregory: could you please post it as an answer here? Thank you. – Quassnoi Sep 18 '23 at 14:08
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    @Kyralessa The practicality of inducing hiccups seems rather irrelevant - it's not like doctors go around inducing cancer in order to conduct cancer research. You can study a phenotype without specifically inducing it, the only problem is that your data is limited to the natural rate of incidence. Medical phenomena far more rare and serious than hiccups have been studied in great detail. – Nuclear Hoagie Sep 18 '23 at 18:26
  • @NuclearHoagie Really? Doctors never induce cancer in any species in order to study cancer? That seems unlikely to be true. – Kyralessa Jan 02 '24 at 10:27
  • @Kyralessa Of course there are many animal models of cancer where disease is purposefully induced. That doesn't change the notion that you can still study rare diseases without inducing them - there are many diseases or specific types of cancers that don't have a good analogue in non-humans, but we still study them without inducing them in any living thing, either non-human (which wouldn't be possible) or human (which wouldn't be ethical). – Nuclear Hoagie Jan 02 '24 at 13:22
  • There's some research on intractable hiccups (hiccups lasting hours/days/longer), but AFAICT startling is not a cure for it. Peleg 1996 "Most folk remedies for hiccup involve some form of pharyngeal stimulation(7): the rapid ingestion of two teaspoons of sugar; the rapid ingestion of two glasses of liquor; swallowing dry bread; swallowing crushed ice; having someone shout "Boo!" loudly in order to produce a state of response; and forceful tongue traction sufficient to induced a gag reflex. " https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A18356266/AONE. – Ben Bolker Mar 04 '24 at 00:55
  • See also https://www.cfp.ca/content/cfp/46/8/1631.full.pdf "Case report: Sexual intercourse as potential treatment for intractable hiccups". Based on 15 minutes of literature-skimming I'm 95% sure that there is no published peer-reviewed information on the efficacy of the folk remedies ... – Ben Bolker Mar 04 '24 at 00:56
  • I could post an answer based on these and related links, but it would be inconclusive as I don't think anyone has tested the folk remedies systematically (there are studies of the Heimlich maneuver, bag-breathing, drugs, stimulation of the palate or pharynx, anaesthesia, ...) (intractable hiccups are also called singultus) (I see that this is referred to in passing on medical sciences SE – Ben Bolker Mar 04 '24 at 01:00

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