What would you do if you lived for ninety-seven years and over sixty of those were filled with almost constant hiccups?

Would it drive you crazy? Would you go about life as if they weren’t happening? Would you spend your waking hours searching for a cure?

As nonsensical as it sounds, Charles Osborne lived for nearly sixty-eight years with chronic hiccups. Born in 1894, Charles lived in Iowa. In 1922, he was attempting to weigh a hog for slaughter when he fell down. While he reportedly felt nothing, he started hiccupping. Reports from this time state that, on average, he would have nearly forty every minute. 

If you’re doing the math, this equals to almost fifty-eight thousand hiccups a day – which seems nearly impossible.

Alas, it was not. Poor Charles suffered – just not quietly. He attempted numerous home and medical cures but found them all unhelpful. Doctors were able to tell him that he burst a blood vessel in his brain when he fell. It was the size of a pin. In the 1970s, a specialist determined that this small area was in the brain stem and inhibited the hiccup response. 

The discovery did not lead to a cure.

Charles tried an experimental hormone medication that did eliminate his hiccups for approximately thirty-six hours. This victory was short-lived as the side effects of the medication were just as bad as the hiccups, if not more so. 

He learned to live with his hiccups. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic taught him to suppress most of the noise with methodical breathing in between hiccups. It couldn’t have been easy but it worked for him. 

However, his hiccups mysteriously stopped in 1990, a year before his death. As of now, there is no information as to how or why. By this time, however, it was estimated he hiccupped over four hundred million times! Surprisingly, he died in 1991 of natural causes, not by anything induced by his hiccups.

While Charles Osborne holds the record for the longest bout of hiccups, he is not alone in his plight. Others suffer from chronic (intractable) hiccups.

What causes this? Is there a cure?

Many of us have had hiccups and generally, they are temporary involuntary spasms of the diaphragm. Sometimes it happens when you eat something spicy or drink too much caffeine.

But what happens when they don’t go away like in Charles Osborne’s case?

Research shows that intractable hiccups – hiccups that last longer than a month – can be a sign of a more serious issue. In Charles’ case, the disturbance to his brain appears to be the cause. For others, it could be a variety of things. Research has found connections between intractable hiccups and a medulla disturbance, afferent and efferent nerve issues, metabolic or endocrine disorders, drugs, or psychosomatic conditions, amongst other things. Everything is based on the individual as what affects one person may not affect another.

Either way, this condition can be exceedingly difficult. Unfortunately, some unlucky souls with intractable hiccups pass out due to the lack of oxygen, incur severe weight loss due to the inability to eat or die due to the exhaustion.

As of now, however, there is no cure since it has been minimally studied.