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Within 30 minutes of waking up today, I got the hiccups.
For some people, hiccups are not very serious. Folks get them for 10 minutes or so maybe once every month, or perhaps some get them after a serious night of drinking (I have fallen victim to the drunk hiccups before as well).
In reality, a drunk elephant is terrifying.
For me, though, hiccups are very serious. I get the hiccups once about every 2 weeks, and they attack me off and on for the entire day. By the end of the day, my chest actually hurts from the amount of spasms it has endured. I decided today to figure out why.
So I went to wikipedia, and then I found this.
“Christian Straus and co-workers at the Respiratory Research Group, University of Calgary, Canada, propose that the hiccup is an evolutionary remnant of earlier amphibian respiration; amphibians such as tadpoles gulp air and water across their gills via a rather simple motor reflex akin to mammalianhiccuping.[3] In support of this idea, they observe that the motor pathways that enable hiccuping form early during fetal development, before the motor pathways that enable normal lung ventilation form. Thus, according to recapitulation theory (a theory that has lost much of the support it once had) the hiccup is evolutionarily antecedent to modern lung respiration. Additionally, they point out that hiccups and amphibian gulping are inhibited by elevatedCO2 and can be completely stopped by the drug Baclofen (a GABAB receptor agonist), illustrating a shared physiology and evolutionary heritage. These proposals explain why premature infants spend 2.5% of their time hiccuping, indeed they are gulping just like amphibians, as their lungs are not yet fully formed. Fetal intrauterine hiccups are of two types. The physiological type occurs prior to twenty-eight weeks after conception and tend to last five to ten minutes. These hiccups are part of fetal development and are associated with the myelination of the Phrenic nerve (which drives the diaphragm).”
So my conclusion is that I am more of an amphibian than most people.
also, my tongue is forked
(side note: 15 minutes into writing this post, the hiccups are still going strong)
You may be thinking, “Keith! Just drink some water upside down!” or “Keith… boo!” But unfortunately, those simple strategies don’t work for my hiccups. In fact, the only thing that has ever gotten rid of my hiccups 100% of the time is…
MINUTE MAID BERRY PUNCH!
So is there a connections between amphibians and berry punch? Let’s see!
I asked the internet, “What do amphibians eat?”
ANSWER: Amphibians are carnivores. They eat each other and other small insects.
So then I asked the internet, “What are the ingredients in Minute Maid Berry Punch?”
FILTERED WATER, SUGAR/GLUCOSE-FRUCTOSE, CONCENTRATED FRUIT JUICES (GRAPE, PEAR AND STRAWBERRY), CITRIC ACID (CONTROLS TARTNESS), NATURAL FLAVOUR, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C)
Hmmm… no amphibians or insects are listed in the ingredients… unless they fall under “Natural Flavour.”
which I will assume they do.
(update: 30 solid minutes of hiccups at this point)
To keep you posted, I’ll send a tweet every time I get the hiccups and lose them throughout today, Wednesday, May 11, 2011.
