Hiccups, Sneezes, and Tiger Bread
I was listening to Clive Bull at work a few nights ago, and he was talking about something called “tiger bread.” Apparently it’s a loaf of bread that’s been smeared with olive oil (or something) before baking, which creates a design on top of the loaf that sorta resembles a tiger’s coat.
Never heard of it, but that’s not really the point of this quickie update… One of his callers said she rarely eats bread, because it gives her the hiccups. Bread!
The weird thing: Toney suffers under the exact same curious curse. Perhaps there’s one on every continent? I don’t know. But Toney can’t take a bite of a dinner roll, slice of toast, or piece of white bread, without hiccuping for the next 45 minutes. It’s an amazing thing to behold.
The only time I get the hiccups is when I have one too many beers. But I’m so “accomplished” at this point, one too many exists only as an abstract theory. And there are no foods that trigger ‘em, or weather conditions, or colors, or moods.
So I rarely get the hiccups. However, I know how to get rid of them, when I do… My grandfather, on my dad’s side, died in 1974. But even though I was fairly young then, I remember the never-fails hiccup cure he taught me, and have been using it most of my life.
You take nine sips of water, you see, without breathing in between. Nine tiny sips, right after the other. Then, when you’re finished, you just continue breathing normally.
That’s the key: controlling your breathing after all the sipping. Instincts tell you to take in a big lungful of air at the end, but that’ll defeat the purpose. You’ve got to make an effort to just breathe normally, and the hiccups will go away. And I ain’t shittin’ ya, it never fails.
I’ve tried to teach the Secrets how to do this, and Toney too, but they always gasp for air at the end, and proclaim the technique “stupid.” It’s all in the breathing though, and recalibrating the rhythm.
Is there anything that always makes you hiccup? And do you know any never-fails cures? What about hiccupping’s distant cousin, sneezing? I knew a guy who would sneeze in bright sunlight. WTF??
Use the comments link, if you’ve got anything to say about hiccupping or sneezing. And also tiger bread, if you know anything about that weirdness…
And I’ll be back with a full-length update on Monday.
See ya then.
Filed under: Quick
Whenever my husband sneezes he sneezes exactly three times. No more, no less. I can sneeze upwards of twenty times in one sitting thanks to allergies.
As for hiccups, he rarely gets them but once I get them I’ll have them several times throughout the day. Drinking water often helps, but not always.
[Reply]
I tried sevaral things to cure hiccups (drinking water, holding my breath, rubbing my ear lobes, etc). And the only thing that I’ve found which always works is to eat a giant spoonful of peanut butter. It sounds nuts and gross, but it works. You can’t get away with a little spoonful though, it has to be a heaping blob from one of those spoons that’s almost too big for your mouth.
Behold, a loaf of “tiger bread”. I’ve never had it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tigerbread.jpg
[Reply]
Third! Nope, not much of a hiccuper myself. And when I do, a spoonful of sugar sometimes helps.
[Reply]
in jr highschool, my bio teacher told us that hicup trick. it’s a sure-fire way to cure them. it has NEVER failed me.
the gasping for air ruins it because you have to force your breething back to normal, and a gasp is a violent action… or something.
[Reply]
No hiccup triggers that I can point a finger at, just the randomn outburst once or twice a year. The other day I got them for about 5 minutes. Similar to your granddads method, controlled breathing makes short work of them.
[Reply]
Dump a heaping teaspoon of granulated sugar in your mouth and grind it on to the roof of your mouth with your tongue.
When dissolved, chug a cup of water. Hiccups gone.
[Reply]
Toney and I share the same curse! Bread gives me the hiccups every time. The chewier the bread, the worse it is. Sorry to shoot down your “one per continent” theory (if not for Lake Erie, it would be about a 3 hour drive from my place to yours).
I cure mine by holding my breath, which has about a 90% success rate on the first try and 99% by the second. I’ve tried the “spoon of sugar” method as well, but it only works if someone else is holding the spoon… I’ll give the “9 sips” technique a test run next time and see how it works.
[Reply]
The sneezing in bright sunlight is called *deep breath* “autosomal dominant compelling heliopthalmic outburst syndrome”….I have the same problem. Really neat acronym with it…just Google it to discover.
[Reply]
My husband gets that sneezing in bright sunlight thing. If he feels like he has to sneeze he will actually look at a bright light so that he can (freak, if you ask me!). As for the hiccups, a manager I had a long time ago told me to put your head upside down and drink water through a straw as fast as you can. I thought he was just trying to make me look like an ass but it actually works!
BTW maybe it has something to do with the yeast in the bread??
[Reply]
Jeff, I’m suprised you don’t remember Tiger Bread. It was distributed in our area when we were kids throughout the 60s and early 70s, and TV advertising spots ran in heavy rotation. The striped part of the bread was actually the sides of the loaf – the types of pans the bakery used were ribbed so that the finished, baked loaf had thin diagonal light/dark stripes on the sides, which set it apart, at least as far as appearances go, from other commercially baked bread. The packaging was great, too – it was bold orange and black tiger stripes printed against a white background, covering the entire bag, with the large Tiger Bread logo in the middle. When you walked into the bread aisle the packaging really stood out! A good part of the marketing was aimed at children, featuring a cartoon tiger character mascot; and I can vividly recall the commercials running during the Mr. Cartoon and Uncle Wille (remember him?) cartoon shows. It seems to me that the bread was baked by one of our local bakeries like Heiner’s.
[Reply]
Okay – I just followed Jason’s Wiki link, and apparently THAT was the bread Clive Bull was referring to. Oh well, the Tiger Bread I was talking about still makes a nice aside…
[Reply]
Sneeze in the sunlight too. I just swallow tons of air til I have to burp, ta da! no more hiccups.
My son always sneezes 3 times too, don’t ask me I just made him, can’t explain him.
[Reply]
someone, translate the bunker cam for me, por favor
[Reply]
I was taught once by a school nurse to bend over so my head is upside down, then drink water while holding my nose. You look like a doof but it works.
[Reply]
Whenever someone is hiccuping, I tell them “I will give you ten dollars if you hiccup again.” and it seems to work every time, because then the desire is to hiccup, and you just can’t hiccup when you want to. However, I don’t give them the money.
[Reply]
I totally agree with the other 2 surf reporters about the drinking water upside down. It gets that flap that is out of place back to where it belongs.
and a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.
[Reply]
Oh, I also often sneeze when entering bright sunlight. Something about the white light hitting my eyes seems to trigger an instant sneeze. Glad to hear other people have that problem. ;o) Could be worse, could be hiccuping.
[Reply]
Alice in WV – according to Altavista’s babel fish, it translates:
“Jorge: She wants to be hardcore and her mother does not leave it”
So maybe that’s a “she” that wants to be involved in porn? Seems to me there’s more than just a mother holding her back.
[Reply]
“Jorge: He wants to be hardcore but his mom won’t let him.”
[Reply]
The trick to the water drinking is to make them decide which sip of water tasted the best. Then they get their mind off the “drowning”.
[Reply]
I have no response to the bunker cam.
The hiccuping thing- Hiccups are caused by a muscle spasm in t he diaphragm.
The cures are have a simialr thing in common. They stimulate the vagus nerve, the 10th cranial nerve, which, among other things, helps control the diaphragm.
Drinking water in sips, drinking upside down, putting sugar or peanut butter on the tounge, applying pressure just above the eyebrows all have the effect of stimulating the vagus nerve. Enough stimulation can work like hitting the “reset” button and stop the spasms.
My guess is that something about bread hyperstimulated the vagus nerve and caused the hiccups.
But that’s just a guess.
[Reply]
Wow, Jorge, that was hardcore! ;o) Seriously, thanks for the info. Next time I get the hiccups I’ll be furiously pressing my eyebrows and screaming, “Reset, damn you!”
[Reply]
I have the sneezing in bright sunlight thing. It’s also helpful when you feel a sneeze coming on then it starts to go away. Just look into bright lights … Achoo !
Hiccup wise, my wife suffers from simultaneous hiccuping and burping – - a belch with each hiccup. Painful.
[Reply]
A hiccup trigger for me is an empty stomach. If I go too long without eating, and I get really hungry, I inevitably get the hiccups.
[Reply]
Stop it Mom! Let him be hardcore!
[Reply]
Well that was an interesting Toney fact.
My cure for hiccups:
This was realized via an elementary school workbook circa 2nd grade. Here is my CURE-ALL for hiccups. It dos require milk. Water sometimes does the job, but is inconsistent.
Take a swallow of milk and hold your breath as you do this.
Tilt you head to the side and put your index finger in your ear as you swallow the milk and hold your breath.. yeah the ultimate multi-task, but SWEAR this works.
Hold your breath as long as you can, yes, head is still tilted to the side. Release the air slowly once you have had enough.
I am curious if this works for others.
Try it and let me know.
I swear this is the cure-all for hiccups.
[Reply]
It pays to be up at 3am (PDT). Top 30!!
An XBF used to sneeze if he stared at the sun. Weird.
Hiccups are random for me and they usually go away by themselves.
My mom is a twenty in a row sneezer and so is the spouse. They get upset when I just stare at them while sneezing . . . I’m waiting for the last sneeze and then I say “God Bless You”. They think I should be blessing them after EACH one. Sheesh!
I can usually stop a small sneeze by pressing my finger on my upper lip (in that little indentation, I used to know the name) against my gums. Seems that the “pain” takes away the need to sneeze.
[Reply]
You know what ALWAYS gives me the hiccups? Raw carrots. I kid you not. A couple mouhtfuls of those and I have violent hiccups all day. And it seems when you get them once in a day, they haunt you all day long, at least they do me.
[Reply]
The bunker cam cracks me up. My mother once told me that she wanted to be a hippie but her mother “didn’t approve” – she didn’t understand why I laughed at her. That boy looks like he could use some “hardcoore” flava.
[Reply]
Cure for hiccups: Hold your breath and say a Hail Mary. Works everytime.
Sneezing: Looking at the sun and sneezing makes your eyes tear up which causes a reaction in your nose and makes you sneeze. If I feel a sneeze coming on and want to get it over with, it works for me to look at the sun, about 80% of the time.
My husband and I can sometimes cancel out each other sneezes. If the other one is starting to sneeze (ah ah ah…but no ‘choo’ coming), if we say an anticipatory ‘God Bless You’, the sneeze will go away. It’s maddening, especially if you feel you really have to sneeze.
[Reply]
“I knew a guy who would sneeze in bright sunlight. WTF??”
Early on in my marriage I noticed that my husband
would sometimes look up at a light with a strained
look on his face then all of sudden he would sneeze.
So one day I said to him, “Why do you look at the light when your about ready to sneeze?” He said the light helps
you follow through with the sneeze, you know, because
sometimes your right at the brink of sneezing and it
just goes away leaving you feeling unfulfilled.
So I started doing it and it really does work.
(this works with artificial light as well as sunlight)
So I’m thinking this guy you knew was just “ultra sensitive”
to the sunlight .
[Reply]
Evil Twin, Now that you mention it, I DO remember Tiger Bread. It’s not the kind Clive was talking about, but I remember the stuff they used to sell in WV with the same name. Wow, that was a memory deeply buried!
And Uncle Willie… He was on the Sleepy Jeffers show, and could make his necktie go up and down. I actually saw him “perform” once, at Sissonville High School (who the hell knows?), and he threw a fake brick at me, made of foam.
[Reply]
My husband and all three of my children have the sunlight sneezes (must be genetic). I have the can’t-sneeze-less-than-eight-times-in-a-row condition. My sneezes also sound like I’m crying. People who don’t know better always give me a very concerned look when it starts around them.
[Reply]
I know someone who sneezes when they first see sunlight. Weird!
My hiccup cure….take a full glass of water, put a paper towl over it and drink the water through the paper towl. Odd, I know, but it works!
[Reply]
I like that obscure hiccup fix, Ryan!
I will have to remember that one!
[Reply]
I’m like you, Jeff – the only real hiccup trigger I have is that one beer more than a guy should have.
Cure? Take a shot of whiskey (it IS coming on bourbon season) while holding my nose, and holding it in my mouth until the burn goes away (about the same trick as the nine sips, I’m guessing), and then swallowing and breathing normally does the trick.
Then again, a shot of whiskey on top of one too many beers might not be the best plan…
[Reply]
Jeff – yeah, I’d give anything to have a video copy of one of those old Sleepy Jeffers shows! I used to watch it in the mornings before school, and I loved Buddy Starcher’s pedal steel playin’! That show had a tremendous white trash factor which made it all the more fascinating. They’d sing a lot of old gospel standards and Willie always brought his daughter Little Linda out to sing a tune or two, like “Chocolate Ice Cream Cone” or some such. When I was 16 I was a pump jockey at a gas station on the west side, and Uncle Willie would occasionally stop there for gas after church on Sundays. The car he drove always had three or four people beyond any reasonable capacity for a car that size. He was always a really nice fella, though, and would do the ol’ adam’ apple tie wiggle trick (that you mentioned) for ya if you asked. He wore those damned Colonel Sanders ties every day in real life – I always thought that they were just part of the Uncle WIllie outfit, but in reality the only difference between his Uncle Willie persona and his everyday street clothes was that damned red straw-haired wig and the freckles drawn on his cheeks with eyeliner. Ahhh, the grand ol’ days of classic Mountaineer entertainment. Almost as much fun as Oak Hill wrasslin’ with Shirley Love…
[Reply]
Hey The Evil Twin and Jeff,
I found this website a while back and it has a huge collection of old cartoons and theme songs in ABC order (scroll to bottom). I found “Banana Splits” on there. Something I haven’t thought about in a long time. You guys might find it interesting.
http://melaman2.com/cartoons/index2.html
[Reply]
Sunlight doesn’t really make me sneeze, but when I get that nasty sensation of needing a sneeze that just won’t come, looking at a bright light coaxes it out. The result is fairly deafening. My wife thinks it is hilarious, seeing me going “Ahhhhh…. ahhh….. ahhh….” and looking around for a bright light to stare into. Which is good, because it is either funny or just goofy beyond recognition.
I don’t get the hiccups very often, and I’ve never found a cure that reliably works for me (though I’ll try the ones recommended here). One I heard as a kid was to walk around the outside of the house backwards three times without letting the word “elephant” cross your mind.
[Reply]
Jesus,
You’re not even trying anymore.
[Reply]
Are you certain it was a fake brick ??
[Reply]
Tiger Bread? Never heard of it but I have had Monkey Bread and of course being in the south, bread pudding. Hmmmmmmmm!
[Reply]
Well, I suppose this is the proper venue to reveal a long hidden secret to hiccup fixing.
First–what is a hiccup? It’s a spasm in the diaphraghm. Cure? Stop the spasming.
To do this, take a deep breath, then place two fingers firmly on that soft spot of your chest at the base of the breastbone where the ribs come together. It will hurt a little when you depress, but a little means your holding it correctly. Slowly release your air, then slowly lift your fingers from the spot–and it will be over.
Laugh if you will–but give it a try.
[Reply]
If your hiccups are alcohol induced a shot of lime juice works every time. Has about a 75% success rate with non-alcohol related ones. I bartended for 10 years and was taught that by the master. Pretty disgusting but hiccuping sucks!
As far as sneezing, I also a a bright light induced sneezer. Wally generally sneezes 10+ times in a row. I always only sneeze once. Weird how this stuff works.
[Reply]
I generally sneeze twice in a row…VERY, VERY LOUD! Sometimes scares the fire outta my husband. My husband, on the other hand, gets the allergy sneezing cranked up in the middle of the night and can sneeze uncontrollable for an hour, I swear. Not only does it make him miserable, I share in it by getting my sleep interrupted. I think he takes some allergy medicine and eventually it goes away.
I rarely have hiccups and don’t know what triggers ‘em but spicy food triggers ‘em for the hubby and does so almost immediately. No sooner than he finishes a spicy dish, he proclaim “I shouldn’t have eaten that” and the hiccups will commence. It’s hit or miss though and doesn’t happen all the time. Remarkably, every cure we’ve ever tried for him doesn’t work. He’ll have to give the 9 sips a try.
[Reply]
sunlight hicupper… husband thinks i am nuts. read somewhere that 36% of the population (or something like that) does
[Reply]
wait – i mean sneezer, not hiccupper
[Reply]
I only have two words……….CHARLIE WEST!!!!
[Reply]
Hiccups Cure – For me, it’s keeping my diaphragm still for as long as possible. Holding my breath and not moving seems to work best. Cures ‘em every time.
I get that sun/sneezing thing, too. Apparently, it’s most common in males and is genetic. Or something.
[Reply]
I thought I was weird, definitely a “bright sunlight” sneezer.
[Reply]
My hiccup cure is to take a deep, deep belly-breath, slowly and so much that you can feel your diaphragm and stomach muscles stretching out. Hold it for 10 seconds, then slowly release. It stretches out the diaphragm (as I already mentioned), and since irritation of the diaphragm is what causes hiccups, problem solved. I had no idea I would ever use the word “diaphragm” so many times.
[Reply]
Hiccup cure – put a kitchen knife in a glass full of water, lean the knife against your forehead, and drink half the glass. Taught this trick to my wife and daughter, and never fails.
[Reply]
I can’t eat white bread without getting the hiccups either. It doesn’t matter what brand of white bread it is, it all has the same effect. I can however eat any other variety of bread – Tiger Bread, Wholemeal or Grain bread etc. – with no side effects. Go figure!
[Reply]
Every time i eat raw carrot i grt hiccups. a few minutes ago this was the case, and i was so frustrated i googled “hiccups + carrots” to see if any thing would come up. you can imagine my surprise when i found at least 20 sites with people who had similar experiences! does any one know why it’s ALWAYS raw carrots? is it just a state of mind thing now?
[Reply]
Wholemeal bread, or wholemeal toast,cause both my son and I to start with the hiccups. Not every single time, but more often than not. So it’s not just Toney!
I think the toast might be worse actually.
[Reply]
I also get hiccups from raw carrots. I also get the strangest indigestion with a watery mouth and an odd sensation in my chest for a few minutes when I eat them on an empty stomach. does anyone else get this too. It is only on an empty stomach and usually in the evening. This is the ONLY food that does this
[Reply]
I dont get hiccups very often, but when I do I have them for hours on up to a couple of days. My dad had them for a week once. No meds or trick helped.
As far as sneezing goes, 99.9% of the time I sneeze twice. Which is my reason for searching sneezes. I just sneezed three or four times in a row. Most I think Ive ever sneezed at once. Bright light makes me sneeze too. Walking outside on a bright sunny day almost always gets a sneeze out of me. Or if I feel I have to sneeze Ill look into a light to help it out. And for whatever reason, I dont know why, eatting peanut butter makes me sneeze! Only once though and then Im fine. Its not the smell of it, I can take a big whiff of it no problem. But once I eat a bite I know its coming.
[Reply]
On another subject here… Can anyone else make thierselves get goose bumps? Without being cold or thinking about fingers on a chalk board? Like totally upon request?
[Reply]
Bread of any kind make me hiccup, painfully hiccup. White, wheat, whole…rolls, bisquits, pizza, buns, cake or muffins. If it is a bread product I hiccup.
What I want to know is WHY? Any clues?
[Reply]