Why do you get hiccups?

Question

Random question i know. I'm curious.

Answer 1

there is an imbalance of air between the two lungs. One lung has more air than the other one.

Answer 2

Hiccups are the result of an involuntary, contraction of the diaphragm followed by the closing of the throat, the air rush into the lungs causes a hic sound...

Answer 3

you swallow air.

Answer 4

We get hiccups when our diaphragm is irritated by something, for example eating something dry without having a drink, by drinking alcohol, and many other things.

The best cure for hiccups is to drink some water.

Answer 5

Because air gets trapped in your diaphragm. (The muscle under your lungs that help you breathe)

Answer 6

Trapped air in the esophagus (not the diaphragm)(although erractic movement of the diaphragm is what causes the air to get trapped in the esophagus.)

Sometimes burping or belching will get rid of the air and hence the hiccups.

I've trained myself to just make my chest muscles tight and burp the instant I get a hiccup.  It's become an automatic response for me.  The result is that I never have more than one hiccup whenever I get the hiccups.

http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/hiccup...

Answer 7

When you hiccup, your diaphragm involuntarily contracts. (The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle that separates the chest cavity from the abdomen. It plays an extremely important role in breathing.)

This contraction of the diaphragm then causes an immediate and brief closure of the vocal cords, which produces the characteristic sound of a hiccup. What actually causes the hiccup is difficult to say - in most instances, there is no obvious cause.

Attacks of the hiccups seem to be associated with a few different things: eating or drinking too fast; being nervous or excited; or having irritation in the stomach and/or throat.

In some extremely rare cases, the underlying cause of hiccups can be pleurisy (inflammation of the membrane lining of the lungs and chest cavity), pneumonia, certain disorders of the stomach or esophagus, pancreatitis, alcoholism, or hepatitis. Any one of these conditions can cause irritation of the diaphragm or of the phrenic nerves that supply the diaphragm - it's the irritation that causes the hiccups.

Still, the cause of most attacks of the hiccups remains a mystery.