Why do people hiccup?

THAT'S THE WHY:They can strike at the most inopportune of moments, and getting rid of them quickly might require heroic holding of breath or acrobatic feats like drinking water from the "wrong" side of the glass.

Hiccups. Why do we get them? Sometimes chronic or severe hiccuping can be related to an underlying medical condition.

But for the slightly bothersome, guerrilla kind that sneak up on you, linger a while then leave just as fast, the trigger can be more benign, such as a full stomach irritating the phrenic nerves that supply the diaphragm – the big sheet of muscle under your lungs that you use to breathe.

On a mechanical level, a hiccup happens when your diaphragm and other muscles in your chest and neck contract suddenly, resulting in air being whooshed into the lungs. The glottis in the throat shuts, generating the “hic” sound.

Writing in Scientific Americanin 2004, Prof William A Whitelaw also suggests that our brains have a "central pattern generator" or CPG for hiccups that fires and oscillates under certain conditions.

All very well, but how do you stop a mild bout of the hics?

"Measures that stimulate the uvula or pharynx or disrupt diaphragmatic [respiratory] rhythm are simple to use and often help to speed the end of a bout of otherwise benign, self-limited hiccups," wrote JH Lewis in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterologyback in 1985.

That’ll be drinking out of the wrong side of the glass or holding your breath, then.