A Tribute From
Jason Camorlinga

Morning MADDNESS vol.23

Intrepid readers,
It is with a saddened heart that I write to you. There is really no reason that I should have left you so long without my words of wisdom and insight into this great catastrophe that we call life. Indeed I am sure you have all been withering away much like a parched man lost
in a desert ( or ?) of misinformation. Fear not dear reader for I have once again taken up the banner of freeing the masses of their dreary everyday existence. Behold....

....My thoughts on hiccups

Since time began there have been countless controversies and issues that have divided mankind, created disagreements and even caused wars. Is there a God, whose god is better, are there aliens, is the death penalty ethical, does Santa Claus exist, Mac vs. PC, and of course, what is the best way to cure a hiccup. Oh how these questions have plagued society, some for longer than others, but all have been a thorn in the side of society since their conception. Fortunately, I have been given the task of taking one of these issues head on and setting the record straight for all of humanity (at least those that read this) once and for all. Since I am such an overachiever and always go the route of being ever so thorough, I decided to unravel the most perplexing mystery of them all, a question that had Aristotle stumped, an issue which the Bible does not touch on, a problem so deviant that it even had Einstein throwing his hands up in surrender; Why do we hiccup and how on earth do we stop these things?

A Deeper Look at the Hiccup

The American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary defines a hiccup as; ..A spasm of the diaphragm resulting in a rapid, involuntary inhalation that is stopped by the sudden closure of the glottis and accompanied by a sharp, distinctive sound... (2004) Hiccups, also known as hiccoughs, can come in any variety of ways. Some are fast but small, others are infrequent but they shake you to your very core. Some last for only a few minutes while others can last for hours. Chronic hiccups are rare. A pig farmer, Charles Osborne from Iowa, suffered through 430 million hiccups, starting in 1922 and stopping in 1987. No known cause was ever found for Osborne’s hiccups.
No matter what type of hiccups or with what frequency, everyone can agree that they are an annoyance and a hindrance to everyday life. The anti-hiccup front is about all that people will agree on however, after that there is only controversy and mistrust thrown around.

Causes

The first area of disagreement would be that of causation. What causes hiccups to occur? There are three schools of thought on this issue: medical/ physiological, ingestion and "we have no idea so lets just make many different guesses on the matter".
The first school of thought stems from the modernist era where absolutely everything must be reduced to a scientific formula and definition. ..The vagus nerve impulse pattern in the throat causes spasms of the diaphragm which lead to a case of hiccups... Well, if you put it that way it sounds so clear..
The second explanation leans heavily on ingestion as the root of the problem. They believe that if you eat or drink something too quickly then you will most likely contract the dreaded hiccups.

..Most simple cases of hiccups come after eating or drinking too much or too quickly. The stomach, which is situated right below the diaphragm, becomes distended and irritates it. This will cause the diaphragm to contract, as it does when we breathe in. Sometimes hiccups will occur because of a disturbance to the nerve pathways from the brain to the muscles involved. This explains why hiccups may occur with temperature changes or emotional situations. It is also the reason that a sudden shock can sometimes abolish an attack. Persistent hiccups may signify problems in the brain, spinal cord or any of the structures around the diaphragm or chest wall... (Hazell, 2004)

While eating too fast may actually cause hiccups, it is rather hard to believe. I have a sneaking suspicion that this school of thought is just a nasty rumor started by mothers trying to get their families to eat slower at the dinner table and is not really based on anything that resembles factual data.
Lastly we come to the more eclectic of the theories, one which while rather helter-skelter may be the most true. I like to call it the catchall category. ..In most cases there is no obvious cause of hiccups, although hot and spicy food, carbonated drinks, eating too fast, nervousness, sudden temperature changes, an unintended, but quick swallow of air, sudden laughter, fumes, cold air or cold water are suspected culprits. Naturally with a prolonged case of hiccups, a medical cause should be investigated... (Dottie, 2004) May this citation be a good learning experience for you, if you are not entirely sure about something, make about twenty guesses. Surely one of them is bound to have some truth to it and you will be hailed as a great academic.
There is a saying in medicine that the number of cures for a problem is inversely proportional to their effectiveness. There are many suggested cures for the hiccup. Some of the most common are:
.. Breathing into a paper bag;
.. Drinking water from the "wrong" side of a glass;
.. Putting sugar under the tongue;
.. Sucking on a fresh lemon;
.. Swallowing a teaspoon of vinegar;
.. Holding your breath as long as possible;
.. Eating ginger;
.. Having someone scare you.
.. Eating a spoonful of peanut butter.

Remedies

Most people do not really care one way of another about the why of hiccups. All they know is that they have them and they want to get rid of them, but how? Once again there are numerous ideas about how to go about exorcising hiccups from the victim. In fact if you go to www.google.com and search for ..Hiccup cure.. you will get over 23,000 pages of self-proclaimed real cures. I know, dear reader, that you are a busy person and you no doubt have nowhere near the time necessary to actually read 439,000 pages of anything no matter how exciting a topic it is.
O M G!

Once again I am here for you and I have work arduously to break down the cures into three categories. The three main theories are; medical cures, folk cures (old wives cures), and entrepreneurial cures.
The first theory is once again those modernist die-hards. Since they believe that there is a physiological cause for hiccups, they believe that they can be rectified with drugs.

Ataractic drugs such as haloperidol and chlorpromazine as well as atropine also have therapeutic value in otherwise intractable hiccups. Friedgood and Ripstein report an 82% permanent cure rate with 50 mg of chlorpromazine given IV. In one case the hiccups had been present 9 months. Launois, et. al. name baclofen as the drug of choice for chronic hiccup. (Stiennon, 1996)

The author goes on to say that these drugs could cause nausea and vomiting making this the perfect solution for the bulimics of the world. Though in all seriousness the author truly believes that there is a good reason that we have hiccups so if we were to take drugs to actually stop them we could theoretically be causing our body undue harm. His basic argument being hiccups may be an inconvenience, but so can breathing, it does not mean that you should just stop doing it.

The second theory is perhaps the most widely held of the three. The Folk Cure Theory encompasses all the cures that have been passed down by word of mouth since well nigh the tower of babble was being built. You, my dear reader, have undoubtedly heard at least a score of these cures yourself. Hold your breath, drink from the far side of the glass, drink some water, eat a spoonful of sugar, and the scare tactic. I am sure that some of these were thought up purely with the intention of having a good laugh at the expense of the hiccup victim (I.E. drinking from the far side of a glass). Others must have been a desperate attempt of children to live vicariously through the guise of medical cures (I.E. spoon of sugar). I do not think that there is any way to actually know all of the folk cures, but you can find a rather lengthy list of these remedies at http://www.well.com/user/smalin/hiccup.htm.

Just pretend your a martian!

The last category of hiccup treatment theories belongs to the entrepreneur type incredible cures. These are the same people who say that they have a pill to make you lose weight, get smarter while you sleep, and enlarge various body parts all at the same time! This magical pill is of course, all backed scientifically by your local veterinarian on parole. I should hope that I need not spend a great deal of time on these individuals seeing as its rather obvious that they just want your money and are willing to sell you any random mix of crack cocaine in pill form. If, however, you think that they do have some merit to them then perhaps I can interest you in a special pill that actually refinances your house AND lower your debt at the same time! My business partner Dr. Okenblaum swears that its safe. Of course, he is only a Doctor of Education but who really cares about that anyway?

Oh snaps insta-heal

The real answer

So you have read the abbreviated versions of various school of though on the pressing issue of hiccups, but what does it all mean? What is the final verdict? The masses demand to know the unequivocal answer! Well, wait no longer, I give you the answer in but one simple word; Psychology.
I postulate that the act of hiccupping is nothing more than a manifestation of neurosis. What is my proof you may ask? Well, please do, for I have an answer. Science has failed to give us a definitive reason as to why hiccupping actually occurs. After reviewing 192 references, Launois et al. concluded that "The purpose of hiccup is unknown." Golomb (1990) said, ..It is generally believed that these abrupt diaphragmatic contractions do not serve any useful purpose.. Now this should cause concern, we can send people to the moon, break the sound barrier, and make editable play-do; why can we not find a reason for hiccups? It is because there is no logical reason for us to ever hiccup! Hiccupping is just a product of our minds.
Further proof lies in the number of folk cures (in the hundreds) and how they all mysteriously work. I once met a lady who said that to get rid of her hiccups all she had to do was think of the last time she saw a white rabbit. Personally I try to make myself hiccup again when I have hiccups and they will go away. I have not hiccupped repeatedly for years now. There is no scientific reason that thinking of a white rabbit or forcing oneself to hiccup should in fact cure them. I bet that you can talk to one hundred different people and get at least seventy-five different cures that they all will swear on their ancestors graves works for them. How can there possibly be that many cures for something that has a physiological causation?

The simple trick of the matter is to actually BELIEVE that whatever you are trying will work If you believe that pinching your nose will cure you hiccups, then it will. If you believe that counting backwards from 14 will cure your hiccups, then it will. If you believe that Elvis is alive making music with 2-Pac, then you probably have some issues slightly deeper than hiccups. The bottom line is that there is no proof that hiccups have a biological cause, and thousands of people have multiple and very odd cures to them. I am not trying to be all post-modernistic and tell you that everything is what you believe it is, I am just trying to point out that you too can be free of these annoying spasms if you really want to. The only issue I have come across is that now that you have read this, you will know that no method is actually the true method, and in knowing this you will cause yourself at least some level of subconscious doubt in your chosen method. This of course could possibly render your self-made cure impotent.
In the end we still do not know why we hiccup or what exactly causes them, but we do know that we do not have to put up with them anymore.

So rest easy and be hiccup free!

P.S. Santa Clause is really just your dad, Macs are terrible, PCs are virus ridden, and aliens built the pyramids..and the Matterhorn.

<=== Proof!