Andrew Huberman· PhD
The key is to halt the spasming of the phrenic nerve.
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The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
The key is to halt the spasming of the phrenic nerve.
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The reason we get hiccups at all is because we experience a spasm of the phrenic nerve. The phrenic nerve, as you recall, is a nerve that emanates from the cervical region, to be specific C3, 4, and 5. Those spinal nerves go down, of course, behind the heart and innervate the diaphragm, which is the muscle that when it contracts, it moves down and allows the lungs to fill. And then when you relax the diaphragm, then the diaphragm moves up, and the lungs shrink or they expel air, so-called exhalation. Now, the phrenic nerve also has that sensory branch. So it's not just involved in controlling the diaphragm at the motor level. It's also sensing things deep within the diaphragm and in the liver as well because the liver sits right below the diaphragm. So a hiccup has that painful sensation from time to time because there's a rapid sensory feedback or a signal, rather, of a sharp sensation of contraction within the diaphragm. And that's relayed back to the brain. And you consciously perceive that as a little bit of pain. And then, of course, the hiccup is [HICCUPS] the hiccup, which is the spasming of the phrenic nerve that you experience more or less in your throat. But all this really is happening along the phrenic nerve and toward the diaphragm.
What this all means is that if you can stop the phrenic nerve from spasming, you can stop hiccups.
it's a technique that takes advantage of hypercontracting the phrenic nerve over a short period of time so that it then subsequently relaxes or alleviates the spasming of the phrenic nerve.