Immediate Cure For Hiccups Finally Bubbles Up In The Form Of A Straw

At no point in time has anybody ever asked to get the hiccups. Yet, they creep in unannounced, surprise you with their sporadic somersaults, and then, like a traveling circus, vanish without a trace. 

Through the ages, people have claimed to have discovered a way to treat this always-embarrassing inconvenience. Some of the more common ones today include holding your breath, drinking water, and getting spooked.

Ali Seifi, a neurointensivist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, says there’s some salt to these home remedies, as people have tried them and found that they work. However, they can’t explain why these methods are effective and, therefore, won’t know how to replicate them properly the next time they get a bout of the hiccups.

Seifi, as have many doctors, describes that the key to stopping hiccups is by applying pressure in the diaphragm. As an expert in brain injuries, he has encountered many patients with post-surgery hiccups, and it’s given him an opportunity to observe the phenomenon a bit closer.

As such, he’s pinpointed the exact threshold of pressure needed to curb the hiccups, and has even invented a straw that you can easily whip out from your bag whenever the moment strikes.

You see, hiccups are essentially spasms of the diaphragm, which trigger a sudden inhalation of air and the closing of the glottis. The vagus nerve, connecting the diaphragm, chest, and brain, causes the reaction to repeat, The Atlantic explains.

The straw, called ‘HiccAway’, is inspired by the mysterious home remedies that people have vouched for—with wavering confidence—as well as a theorem in physics called Bernoulli’s Principle. Seifi likens the latter to holding a running hose with a thumb; position half your thumb in front of the hose, and the water will keep flowing normally. However, switching up the diameter of the thumb placement changes the speed of the flow.  

The straw is built on the principle, but engineered in reverse, to consistently apply 100 centimeters of water pressure in the diaphragm—the supposed golden number to instantly stop hiccups in adults. Hic, hic, hooray!

HiccAway has a small pinhole at its base, with a larger one on the mouthpiece. This forces the user to exert more suction, ultimately creating more pressure in the diaphragm. The measurements of the entire straw are well-thought-out to perfectly deliver 100 centimeters of water pressure every time.

To use the straw, simply place it in a cup with a shallow amount of water, and then forcibly sip and immediately swallow in one breath. The process should be repeated two or three times uninterrupted.

Development for HiccAway began in 2015, and by 2020, the first magic straw was ready and retailing for a price of US$13.42. Seifi appeared on Shark Tank in January 2022 to get more backing for his invention, and he managed to convince Mark Cuban to chip in US$250,000. Accordingly, the straw has now grossed over US$1 million.

HiccAway is available in five colors—Classic Green, Original Blue, Malibu Blue, Prism Pink, and even PANTONE’s 2022 Color of the Year, Very Peri—on Walmart and Amazon.

[via Futurism and The Atlantic, images via HiccAway]