The People's Pharmacy® with Joe and Terry Graedon

I have used sugar for hiccups for years and it almost always works, but it must be swallowed all at once.

My theory is that the effort required to swallow the dry sugar disrupts the spasms in the diaphram.

I'm 77 and have been using sugar
for hiccups for at least thirty
years and it has always worked for me and anyone I advised to try it.

You can try asking one of your family members to pat the back(on the spinal area from top to bottom and vice versa continuously for 2
minutes. When you feel like you have a hard time breathing that means whatever that sticks to the esophagus that cause the hiccup is going down(good sign). Do it until you can breath smoothly again.
Well it works for me, i don't guarantee that will work for you.

I have used sugar for hiccups for years. Friends laugh at me until they try it:)

It was a little hard at first to learn to swallow it before it melts, but that's the only way it works.

I just tried this, after following a google search, and it worked right away. Thanks :>

After laughing at my wife for advising this, I tried it, and wow, it actually worked (I had been hiccuping all day)... Now I'm trying to figure out why this works!

Has anyone tried this with a baby? My newborn gets hiccups after every feeding. I know this is common w/babies and doesn't hurt her, but it does prevent her from falling back to sleep at night--which (consequently) also keeps us up. Will this work if I dissolve a little sugar in water in her bottle?

Someone betted me $10 during a bout of hiccups that I couldn't hiccup again. IT WORKS. I've said the same to three people since. The mixed feelings etched on their faces as normality immediately resumes is also fun to watch.

I was having a bout of hiccups at a bar one night. The bartender offered me this remedy. She put about a teaspoon of sugar on a lemon wedge. I ate it. The hiccups were gone! Works every time.

Peanut butter is my favorite cure, and it has never failed to work. Probably follows the same physics as the sugar, i.e. difficult to swallow.

The hiccup remedy that has always worked in our family for over 40 years is this: drink some water with a handkerchief or paper towel covering the top of the glass or cup so that you are drinking through the cloth or paper towel.

I tried this once after a bad bout of hiccups at my brother's suggestion. It worked immediately. This was over a year ago. I just had a bout of hiccups and didn't quite remember what to do, but I did dissolve and swallow a sugar packet on my tongue. It worked but just a tad slower. I was nervous because I had stomach cancer surgery a year and a half ago with some fancy repiping called a roux-n -y procedure. I am fine now thank the Lord.

My mom used to give me a tablespoon of sugar and tell me to wash it down with milk. It always worked.

As a kindergarten teacher, my students would have the hiccups and just could not function until they were cured.

Since they were too little to swallow the dry sugar, I mixed one tablespoon of sugar with a half cup of milk and told them to drink up. It never failed to work.

I was told by my sister that a sugar packet would work. I tried it and it worked immediately, I could not believe it. The only difference from the other stories is that I did not try to swallow it dry, I let it dissolve in my mouth first and it still worked great.

I personally used sugar to cure my hiccups for at least ten years ever since I heard the idea of swallowing a teaspoon of sugar. It has always worked for me. Allow the sugar to dissolve in your mouth and swallow it and do not wash it down with anything for at least ten minutes. You will be cured of your hiccups!!

I get the hiccups every time I eat certain types of hot peppers (e.g. jalapenos in Mexican food). A teaspoon of sugar does the trick. Better in restaurants than the old drinking-a-glass-of-water-with-an-upright -knife-in-it-up-against-your-forehead trick. And generally much more effective.

I have used sugar for hiccups for years, but I put some in a teaspoon and trickle a little water in it, so that it is just moist. One dose almost always does the trick.

I have found that dipping baby's pacifier in sugar and then allowing the baby to suck the sugar off the pacifier cures hiccups every time.

I tried sugar for hiccups once, and some of the sugar went down "the wrong pipe," and I almost choked. I get hiccups fairly often, and the only thing that gets rid of them immediately is peanut butter. Take a heaping teaspoon and swallow it all at once. It will stop a hiccup midway.

When my 3 children were infants and were having hiccups, I would use their baby size spoon, putting a small amount of sugar, with a couple of drops of water with it, and put it in their mouths. This remedy always stopped their hiccups instantly.

I also have used this method on many of my 8 grandchildren as well, and use a larger amount for myself, and suggest it for any age or size person.

I don't know where the remedy originated, but I learned it from my mother.

Another successful method I learned from my mother, is one similar to the $10.00 bet mentioned here by another writer. When someone (child or adult) is hiccuping, I would look them sternly in their eyes, and say something such as: "so you have the hiccups.....OK, let my hear a hiccup RIGHT NOW...COME ON CONCENTRATE...HICCUP NOW, HICCUP RIGHT NOW!", and so on. If you can persuade the person to concentrate, this almost always works. In fact, I even use a type of this "concentration" method, silently, on myself, also usually sucessful.

Now...don't laugh too hard, but...I even use this method on my dogs, with it working most of the time!

Our family has been using sugar to cure hiccups since the 1940's or earlier. It works!

I've been using sugar for years to stop my hiccups. A friend had told me about it and I too was skeptical. My hiccups are usually rather violent in nature and can last for hours. This remedy has saved me at work.

I hadn't heard about quickly swallowing it, I've always placed it under my tounge and let it slowly dissolve. As soon as the melted sugar starts to goes over my tounge and down my throat my hiccups immediately stop.

In my family, we call the hiccups the family curse. No matter what I try, nothing works for me except fairly hot water. Drink down quickly until it "hangs up" the throat and makes the swallow difficult. Works immediately and every time for me. I think it's a combination of the heat and that "hard" swallow that changes the rhythm at the diaphragm. But I'm going to try the sugar next time. The hot water may work for those not medically allowed sugar.

Here's a hiccup-ridding trick I learned at Penn State. Get a glass of water with a straw in it. Plug your nose and ears at the same time (pinkies at nose and thumbs at ears). Drink through the straw until you need to come up for a breath. The hiccups will be done. My five-year-old loves this trick.

The cure for hiccups that I use that always works without fail is to hold your breath while drinking water from a teaspoon. My dad says to drink 25 teaspoons of water, but I can never make it past 15. But I do this as long as I can, and the hiccups are gone every time.

I am 68 years old plus. When I was around 12, my repeated bouts of hiccups became downright embarrassing, especially just entering junior high school. Only my English teacher shouting at me stopped them. Then my father suggested placing a clean handkerchief over a drinking glass around 1/3 full of plain water; drinking this water THROUGH the cloth stopped them -- then, and now!

Kind of like CJR says, I used to have someone hold my ears and I'd drink water to get rid of the hiccups. An easier way to achieve the same result is to hold your nose and drink water. It's the drowning effect someone told me. It works for me!

I figured this out when I had the hiccups and I began to eat a smartie little hard candy. Cause they are pure sugar and my hiccups ceased. Now I eat a teaspoon of sugar and instantly, hiccups are gone. How weird a remedy but it is better than having hiccups!!!

I recently had hiccups which lasted for hours. Sugar, paper bag, sipping didn't work. What stopped them immediately was a tablesppon of strawberry jelly.

PEOPLE'S PHARMACY COMMENT: CURRANT JELLY UNDER THE TONGUE HAS BEEN SUGGESTED IN A MEDICAL PUBLICATION