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No one likes hiccups. Luckily, these involuntary spasmodic interruptions usually last only a few minutes. On rare occasions, hiccups persist for a few days, and even more rarely still they persist for longer than a month (in which case they can be considered “intractable”). Then there’s the strange case of Charles Osborne, who was afflicted with a continuous case of hiccups for 68 years — recognized by Guinness World Records as the longest case of hiccups in history. Osborne’s story began with an accident on June 13, 1922, in which he accidentally slipped and fell. His doctor later said he popped a blood vessel in his brain the size of a pin, and theorized that Osborne must have damaged the incredibly small area of the brain that controls and inhibits hiccups.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factMost (if not all) air-breathing mammals suffer this same periodic annoyance. However, scientists have not observed hiccups in reptiles, amphibians, or birds.
Osborne’s diaphragm spasmed 20 to 40 times a minute, on average, during his waking hours — meaning he hiccuped roughly 430 million times throughout his life. To cope with this never-before-seen disorder, Osborne learned breathing techniques that effectively masked his constant hiccuping. Later in life, Osborne appeared in magazines and on late-night television shows to talk about his ailment. In 1978, Osborne told the Associated Press that he’d “give everything I got in the world if I could get rid of them.” Although he traveled the world in search of a cure — even offering $10,000 to anyone who could find one — the best he could do was cope with the affliction. Finally, in 1990, his diaphragm suddenly ended its 68-year-long spasmodic episode on its own. Sadly, Osborne died less than a year later, but he was at least able to experience the final days of his life sans hiccups.
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The medical term for hiccups is “______,” from the Latin for “to catch one’s breath when crying.”
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The medical term for hiccups is “singultus,” from the Latin for “to catch one’s breath when crying.”
Scientists aren’t exactly sure why we hiccup.
For something so ubiquitous, it’s surprising that we still can’t explain why hiccups exist. Scientists note that they do exist for a reason, because a hiccup is not simply a twitch of the muscles, but a complex motor act designed to do… something. Although we still don’t know for sure what that “something” is, scientists have a few ideas. One of the most astounding hypotheses is that hiccups are a genetic holdover from way back — like “when we had gills” way back. Some scientists have argued that hiccuping could be an evolutionary leftover from when we had a need for gill ventilation. Other ideas suggest that hiccups are a way that infants learn how to regulate their breathing (which for some reason persists into adulthood). This seems to support other evidence that humans tend to hiccup less as they age. Other theories suggest that hiccups could be a method for clearing food stuck in the esophagus. For now, the humble hiccup remains a perplexing biological mystery.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
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