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Why has no one cured hiccups yet?
Why has no one cured hiccups yet?
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Altyazı (43)
0:00
- So why is it that doctors can transplant hearts,
0:04
they can map the human genome,
0:06
but they can't reliably cure hiccups?
0:09
(person hiccuping)
0:10
Now, there are a bunch of folk remedies out there, right?
0:11
Holding your breath, getting scared,
0:14
drinking water backwards. (host slurping)
0:17
(host spluttering) How does it even work?
0:19
Anyway, it's unclear if any
0:20
of these reliably beat just, you know, waiting it out.
0:24
And that's because nobody's fully cracked
0:25
why the hiccup exists in the first place.
0:28
One leading theory says
0:29
that hiccups are basically a 400-million-year-old leftover
0:33
from some ancient chapter of our evolution
0:36
because that reflex it turns out is the same move
0:39
that your ancestors used to breathe through gills.
0:43
Now, when you hiccup, your diaphragm spasms down,
0:46
sucking in air, but then that intake of breath,
0:50
that's suddenly stopped by the closing of the vocal cords.
0:53
And that's where the hic sound comes from.
0:56
Now, the first animals to crawl out of the water
0:58
and onto land, well, they were using both gills
1:01
and these primitive lungs to breathe and get oxygen.
1:04
Now, tadpoles, juvenile frogs, today, they still do this.
1:08
They breathe with gills when they're young in the water,
1:10
and then as they grow into adult frogs,
1:12
their lungs take over.
1:14
And when they're young, they contract a muscle similar
1:17
to our diaphragm to pump water over their gills.
1:20
But then that hic reflex slams their throat shut first
1:24
so that they don't get water in their lungs.
1:26
Biologists think that your diaphragm still remembers
1:29
how to do that old move, even though you don't have gills.
1:33
And there's good evidence in support
1:34
of hiccups being this ancient thing
1:36
because we aren't the only animal that gets them.
1:38
So basically you have a nervous system originally built
1:41
for a fish, and sometimes
1:43
that ancient programming goes a bit haywire.
1:46
Anyway if you found this video looking for a cure
1:49
for hiccups, they're probably gone by now anyway.
1:52
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