It’s known that sneezing is a reflex to prevent dust or nose hairs or whatever from getting down into the lungs, but why do people and animals sometimes get hiccups? What function does that serve, and what causes them?
Also, bonus points for any random useful tips on how to make hiccups go away…
Hiccups, I was always told, are when the gases in something release out of it during digestion, like how a hollow carcass in the sea dissolves releases all its bubbles, which if correct, means it’s less a biological function and more a biological response, one that can be avoided by not eating anything hollow or that which contains a mixed chemical content capable of varying forms of interaction, hence the hiccups you might get after drinking certain beverages.
You never heard of burping? Come on. This is clearly bollocks.
Actually, usually when I get hiccups, I can also feel and hear fluids and gasses sloshing around somewhere inside me, and part of me absolutely wishes I could burp during those times.
Keep in mind, they say the human intestines are something like 27 feet long, and are packed in there as mostly a random mess of a ‘knot’, so to speak. So just because you happen to have gasses somewhere in your belly doesn’t always mean the gas is immediately in a spot ready to go either way up or down.
Burping is for gas in your stomach and oesophagus, nothing to do with your intestines. How would hiccoughs help in any way with gases in the intestines?
I never said it helped in any way, as a matter of fact the experience is absolutely miserable and painful when it happens that way. Not like hiccupping is a voluntary reflex ya know, just saying that having trapped gasses in my belly tends to trigger it sometimes.
When that happens to me, the best thing I can do to try to help is to lay down, and occasionally roll over on my left and right sides, until the gas finally finds it’s way out, usually via burping.
But yeah, these reflexes aren’t exactly voluntary.