Man Who Had Hiccups Continuously For 68 Years

Man Who Had Hiccups Continuously For 68 Years

The moment we get Hiccups, we hurry up to grab water and shut it down. Hiccups do create lots of uneasiness most of the times and sometimes we ignore them specially if we are busy. Hiccups are not harmful but as every thing has a reason, so does hiccups have.

What Is A Hiccup?

Hiccups are involuntary contractions of the diaphragm- a muscle that separates chest from the abdomen and plays an important role in our breathing. Each contraction is followed by the closure of your vocal chords that produces the “hic” sound.

Irritation of the nerves that extend from the neck to the chest can cause hiccups. Many conditions can cause this irritation and result in hiccups, including eating fast and swallowing air, smoking, eating or drinking too much, strokes, brain tumors, damage to “Phrenic Nerve“, anxiety and stress, and in babies hiccups may be due to crying, coughing or gastroesophageal reflux. Hiccups last for few minutes but if they persist longer for about 48 hours with shortness of breath, interfering with eating, affecting sleep and other uneasiness, a person should definitely consult a doctor.

The Man Whose Hiccups Lasted For 68 Years

Can you imagine your hiccups to last for years? No of course Not. A hiccup causes so uneasiness, we cannot even tolerate it for seconds, but Charles Osborne is known to be a person who had continuous hiccups for 68 years. He is one of the Guinness medical record breakers known for the longest attack of hiccups who hiccuped 40 times per minute in the early stage.

Osborne was born on an Iowa farm in 1893 who spent his youth and early adult years as a farmhand on his father’s property. It was here, on an afternoon in 1922 that brought him to such a turning point of his life.

In an interview long back he told that he started his hiccups first while picking up a 350 pound of heavy butchering and fell down. He did not feel anything at that moment but doctor then revealed the reason for his hiccups.

Why Could Osborne’s Hiccups Never Stop

Doctors told Osborne that while falling he got one of his blood vessel burst in the brain. Doctor pointed out the tiny pin sized blood vessel to be a part of the brain that controlled hiccup response that resulted to his non stop hiccups that lasted 68 years of his life.

No simple remedies that we use today could help Osborne with his hiccups. Dr Terence Anthoney who treated Osborne later in his life helped him lower his difficulties in living with hiccups. In the beginning, Osborne’s hiccups occurred 40 times per minute that gradually lowered to 20 times per minute. To be more understandable, one hiccup every three seconds during waking hours, physicians estimated it to be 24,000 times per day or some 595,680,000 times his lifetime. It only stopped one year before he died in 1991. After thousands of trials he accepted hiccups to be a part of his life and learned to suppress most of the noise by breathing methodically between hiccups, a technique that was taught by the doctors in Mayo Clinic.

In fact being under such conditions, Osborne managed to live a normal life and could live 97 years with it. He married twice, second marriage happening after he started with his hiccups and also was a father to eight children. However, later in his life it did became problem as it was hard for the food to reach his stomach between hiccups. And mysteriously he had his hiccups stopped an year before he died. His death was also not related to any cause of hiccups.