KID STUFF : Sure Cures for Hiccups?

How do you cure a hiccup? Current Science, a national newspaper for middle-school students, posed that question recently and received a variety of suggestions. Some were old standbys; others more offbeat.

Mentioned most often: holding your breath and drinking water. Other popular solutions: eating sugar or peanut butter, scaring the hiccuping person and breathing into a paper bag.

There was also an outpouring of truly wacky suggestions. Obviously, these should not be tried, Current Science editors said, but they show amazing creative thinking.

For example, Michaela Miller, a seventh-grader in Greensboro, N.C., suggested “you stick out your tongue, then swallow, blink your eyes twice, then hop once and hit your foot.”

Other suggestions: swallow as much ketchup as possible and turn 100 times; bite down on a pencil and drink water; squeeze the juice of grapes into your mouth.

Emily Burge, a science teacher in Linden, Ala., takes this approach: “I firmly place two of my fingers on the sternum (breastbone) and ask the person to breathe slowly. The students first thought I had a new cure for hiccups. Actually, I was checking to see if a student really had the hiccups.” To her surprise, 80% of the students stopped hiccuping within four breaths.