"How to Strengthen the Mind-Body Connection"
There are all manner of purported hiccup "cures,"
everything from chew a lemon, inhale pepper,
or our dog's favorite: a spoonful of peanut butter.
Here's the technique I've decided to try next time I get hiccups:
supra-supra maximal inspiration.
You take a very deep breath and hold for 10 seconds,
and then breathe in even more and hold for another 5 seconds,
and then one final tiny breath in, hold for 5 last seconds,
and an immediate and permanent termination to hiccups was achieved.
When I was a kid, I taught myself how to control my own hiccups
using slow paced breathing
and I was so excited to see there was finally a case report written up on it.
It's really neat. There's a nerve called the vagus nerve that goes directly
from our brain, to our chest, to our stomach,
and connects our brain back and forth to our heart and our gut,
and even our immune system.
The vagus nerve is like the hardwiring that allows our brain
to turn down inflammation within our body.
When you hear about the mind-body connection,
that's what the vagus nerve is and does.
So there's been increasing interest in treating a wide range of disorders with...
implanted pacemaker-like devices for stimulating vagus nerve pathways,
but certain Eastern traditions like Yoga, QiGong, and Zen figured a way to do it
without having electrodes implanted into your body.
Let me explain how. A healthy heart is not a metronome.
Your heart rate goes up and down with your breathing.
When you breathe in, your heart rate tends to go up.
When you breathe out, your heart rate tends to go down.
You can pause this video and test it out on yourself right now
by feeling your pulse change as you breathe in and out.
I'll wait... Isn't that cool?
See, that heart rate variability is a measure of vagal tone,
the activity of your vagus nerve.
And so the game to play next time you're bored
is to try to make your heart rate speed up and slow down
as much as possible within each breath.
This can be done because there's a whole other oscillating cycle going on
at the same time that's speeding, then slowing your heart rate
based on moment-to-moment changes in your blood pressure.
And as any physics geek can tell you, all oscillating feedback systems
with a constant delay have the characteristic of resonance,
meaning you can boost the amplitude if you get the cycles in sync.
It's like pushing your kid on a swing:
if you get the timing just right, you can boost them higher and higher.
Similarly, if you breathe in at just the right frequency
you can force the cycles in sync and boost your heart rate variability.
And why are we doing that again?
Because that allows us to affect the function
of our autonomic nervous system via vagal afferents to brainstem nuclei
like the locus coeruleus, activating hypothalamic vigilance areas,
or at least according to the neurophysiologic model postulation.
I mean, duh!
Uh, and why are we doing this again? It's not just to cure hiccups.
Practicing slow breathing a few minutes a day may have lasting beneficial effects
on a number of medical and emotional disorders, including asthma,
irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and depression, though in the US of A
we've put it to use improving batting performance in baseball.
Now to date most studies have lacked proper controls and have used fancy
biofeedback machines to determine each person's resonant frequency,
but for most people it comes out to be about 5 and a half breaths per minute,
so a full breath in and out about every 11 seconds.
When musicians were randomized into slow breathing groups
with or without biofeedback, slow breathing helped regardless.
Same with high blood pressure.
You can use this technique to significantly drop
your blood pressure within minutes.
The hope is if you practice this a few minutes every day
you can have long-lasting effects the rest of the day, breathing normally.
Practice what exactly?
Slow breathing, 5 or 6 breaths per minute,
split equally between breathing in and breathing out should do it.
So like 5 seconds in, then 5 seconds out,
all the while breathing shallowly and naturally;
you don't want to hyperventilate.
Natural shallow breaths but just breathing really slowly.
Try it the next time you get hiccups.
Works for me every time.