Can you stop hiccups? A Wisconsin doctor may have found the cure.

MINNEAPOLIS — They happen to the best of us and, once they start, there’s often no controlling them. Hiccups are a part of life, but a Wisconsin doctor believes they may be closer to an actual cure. 

“We don’t really know how common hiccups are because they are so common,” Dr. Stephen Stacey, a physician with the Mayo Clinic in La Crosse, Wisconsin, said.

Stacey is an expert in the field, but there’s a hiccup in the research.

“They don’t really cause harm so people haven’t really done that much research to see how common they are,” he said.

There’s also not much research on the cause but it starts in the womb.

“So it may be the nervous system and muscle system just practicing before they put on a big show at birth,” Stacey said.

Stacey is one of few researchers in this field, with the help of his residents, they researched the most important hiccup-related question: Is there a cure for hiccups? Stacey acknowledged some of the more popular “folk remedies,” such as scaring someone out of a hiccup jag. 

“Scaring might work. It would be when you are scared, holding your breath, the acid level goes up and that could trigger the hiccups to go away,” Stacey said.

Another popular method is hanging upside down. Stacey said there is no proof for that one. As for drinking water, Stacey says it can help you hold your breath, as that’s “one (remedy) that had the most evidence behind it.”

Stacey and his partner recently confirmed a cure with a study.

“We tried it on a lot of people and it worked for all of them,” he said.

The key he says is “controlling the diaphragm and having the acid level go up.”

Try breathing in and then keep your throat open, like you are just about to talk, but you are just breathing in and you are still trying to move your diaphragm and then after about 30 seconds, you leave your throat open and then slowly breathe out.

He says the key is leaving your throat open while holding your breath. 

“People need to know about this,” Stacey said.

He says another hack that may also cure the hiccups is to chug a glass of water without coming for air. 

Stacey says we don’t know what triggers hiccups and research is tricky because you have to catch people in the act. They researched the breathing technique by monitoring people in their clinics who just happened to have hiccups.