The Unusual Hiccup Tip Jennifer Garner Shared While Making Muffins
It seems that everyone hiccups. Even the diaphragms of Hollywood's elite — like the one belonging to Jennifer Garner — will lapse into sudden contractions, causing them to emit unwanted noises at the most inopportune of moments, like when they're cooking. Yes, it seems that the hiccup is just another one of the many ways that the human body betrays its owner and, in doing so, establishes who's really in charge.
Even fetuses hiccup. As UT Southwestern Medical Center reveals, it is normal for a baby to hiccup in the womb, and absolutely no cause for alarm. What exactly is a "hiccup?" The Mayo Clinic explains that it is an "involuntary contraction of the diaphragm" and that "each contraction is followed by a sudden closure of your vocal cords, which produces the characteristic 'hic' sound." Why do we hiccup? A Neuroscientist, Robert Provine, told Vox, "We still don't know what hiccups do, and our cure for them hasn't improved since Plato." Yup, the scientific community remains stumped by the common hiccup.
Thankfully, many people have developed their own method for ridding themselves of an annoying "hic." And on an episode of her "Pretend Cooking Show," celeb and muffin maker Jennifer Garner paid it forward by sharing her own unique hiccup cure with fans (via Instagram). Emphasis on the word "unique."
Garner's hiccup cure involves a pig
When it comes to battling a particularly intense case of hiccups, people might be willing to try about anything. After all, no one wants to wind up like Britain's Charles Osborne, an unfortunate man whose hiccupping fit reportedly lasted 68 years and saw him hiccup between 20 and 40 times each minute (per BBC). This fact will likely haunt you the next time your diaphragm misbehaves.
If you do find yourself battling your diaphragm, you may want to step into Jennifer Garner's shoes for a moment and try her hiccup-halting method, which could also appeal to your artistic bent. During an Instagram video of the star preparing an apple cinnamon muffins recipe, she lapsed into the throes of hiccups after heating the apples. What did she do? Well, she closed her eyes and drew a pig in her mind, of course. While Garner's trick is unusual, it silenced her hiccups. It seemed her big takeaway was, "I feel like I could maybe draw a pig." Even if her trick had proved unsuccessful, it definitely deserves an A+ for creativity.
Would eating the muffins also have cured her hiccups? We don't know. But according to findings published by StatPearls (via the National Library of Medicine), anecdotal evidence suggests that people may be able to remedy hiccups by consuming sugar, "sipping vinegar," drinking something cold, or just holding their breath. The next time someone finds themselves battling hiccups, maybe they'll mentally doodle a little porker.