Who has passed through life without hiccuping? In the video above, researcher John Cameron, takes sufferers through the two possible reasons we hiccup. One is that it’s an evolutionary quirk left over from when life moved out of water on to land. “An inhalation that could move water over gills followed by a rapid closure of the glottis preventing water from entering the lungs.”
The second theory suggests that since it's a peculiarity observed only in mammals, it could be an adaptation to expel the air from the stomach, "a sort of glorified burp". This theory takes into account that babies hiccup more than adults, and could be linked to the uniquely mammalian act of nursing.
There are no known scientific cures for hiccups yet, and so we are free to explore solutions. Whatever you do, though, don’t ever let a hog fall on you – that was what led a man to hiccup for 68 years straight.
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