Escalating Hiccup
Stretching and Other Tried and Tested Ways to Stop Hiccups

I’ve never been excited about getting hiccups before but after receiving so many responses for The Best Cure for Hiccups, I actually look forward to getting one so that I can try some of the reader-suggested methods for stopping this common problem! I I’ve got hiccups three times since.

First Time Lucky

The first one struck about a month ago, while I was on an escalator at a shopping mall. As I didn’t have a glass of warm water handy, I decided to try one of the “mind over matter” techniques — hiccuping on command. Interestingly, right the hiccups stopped by the time I reached the next floor. It could be one of those short hiccups so I thought I’d wait for another one before blogging about it.

I Bet You Can’t Hiccup When I Tell You To

The second incident happened last week while I was on an escalator at another shopping centre. I practiced the same thing I did a month ago but this time, it didn’t work.

B, who was with me at that time, tried the “fright tactic”, which did nothing to stop the spasming (but I did get a good scare). He then tried the betting as suggested by David (a variant of hiccup on command technique):

“The best cure for hiccups I’ve ever found was introduced to me by my boss. I was hiccuping and he pulled $20 out of his wallet and said, “If you can hiccup again you can have this money.” As soon as I started to concentrate on being able to hiccup they stopped. I now pull this trick on all of my friends, and I’ve never lost the bet!”

Unfortunately, he lost the bet. :P

I am Human, Therefore I Shouldn’t Hiccup?

7 minutes later, it became obvious that it wasn’t going to be a brief episode. I remembered reading the remnants of evolution theory for hiccups. In this hypothesis, it is suggested that these involuntary spasms of the diaphragm are triggered by electric signals generated in the brain stem we inherited from our amphibian ancestors. The proposed cure is to remind ourselves that we’re human. Right… I’m not too sure about the deep-sea culture 500 million years ago, but escalator-riding seems like a very human activity to me, which was what I was doing when I got my hiccup. Still, I had ran out of options so it was worth a shot.

I started thinking about all the things that made me human — surfing the internet, going to the supermarket, cycling at the beach, dining on a seafood buffet…mmm…fish.

Apparently, reminding myself that “I am NOT an amphibian…” was about as helpful as asking people to not think of pink elephants. I had more thoughts about salamanders in that two minutes than in all my school years combined. Needless to say, it didn’t do much to solve my problem (the hiccups only stopped when I was about to get myself a cup of hot tea a few minutes later).

Temporarily Not Human Again

The third time happened five days ago while I was going down an escalator at the convention centre. Okay, I wasn’t really riding the escalator, I was descending a flight of temporary stairs but what are the odds of getting another one while being on an escalator!

Once again I tried a few of the suggested tips:

1. Holding my breath for as long as possible
2. Pressing on my eyes while hitting my back
3. Gasping a few times in between hiccups
4. Swallowing a couple of times before hiccuping
5. Twisting my earlobes

Yes, I looked very silly doing all the above, and no, none of them worked.

Stretching It A Little

I was wondering whether there was such a thing as an escalator allergy when the idea of stopping hiccups by stretching came to mind. Some muscle cramps are relieved by stretching so this suggestion seemed like a very valid one.

I didn’t remember exactly how the stretch should be done so I just pulled my left arm at an angle over my head (like this). Only half expecting it to work, I kept that position for about 10 seconds. Nothing happened.

I tried it again with my right arm, this time a little longer and stretching as far as I could. Surprisingly, the hiccups did stop!

So there you have it, some warm waterless tips tried and tested. It would be too early to say that the stretching method is the cure for hiccups (it’s only been successful with me once) but if it were, it won’t only be the best, it will be the simplest one as well! I am looking forward to my next hiccup to verify whether the result is repeatable.

Escalators, here I come!

My Blog Traffic Generation Story
Techniques I Used to Generate and Increase Web Traffic

I started this blog, in the middle of January 2008 and currently have a readership of more than 3000 a month, a decent number for a blog that just turned 4 months last week. I thought, I’d share how I got here:

JANUARY - Setting A Goal

My goal was to have 3000 readers a month by 15th April 2008.

I had a very strong believe that it was an attainable goal. At that time, I didn’t look into actively promoting my website. I just I thought if my writing and drawings were good enough, my blog traffic would come naturally. I was a naive blogger! :P

FEBRUARY – Give Some Feedback (And Get Some Back)

In mid-Feb, Growing Happiness turned 1 month old with 3 visitors a day. It felt kinda lonely writing for myself but consoled myself with that fact that the blog is only a month old.

I had a shift in mindset at the end of month. I used to think no one would really care about what I had to say on their blogs but then I thought, “if I wanna hear people’s opinion on my blog, surely these people would want to know what I had to say too”.

I started commenting on other people’s blog regularly (about 5-10 blogs a day). I didn’t consciously pick blogs within my niche, just blogs that I was reading at any given time. If I had something to say that would add value to the blog I’m reading, I’d leave a comment.

MARCH – Social Networking

By the end of my second month of blogging, I had about 360 readers or about 12 readers a day. At this rate, my goal of 100 a day readership by the next month looked like an arduously uphill task. I decided to be more active in the blogging community in order to make my presence felt.

I joined NaBloPoMo, a community in support of daily blog posting. It was a good way to kick start a daily writing habit. Although I didn’t get a lot of web traffic from there, I did get quite a few visitors coming for my free HTML badges and the WordPress and Blogger tutorials that came with it.

I also became more active in StumbleUpon. I did a lot of stumbling, wrote reviews of sites I enjoyed and made a couple of friends.

APRIL – Traffic Surge

I joined BlogCatalog a social blog directory and was moderately active in the discussion forums. I made a number of good friends there and, despite my initial resistance, started to enjoy this community thing greatly! The friends I made from BlogCatalog are fantastic. They are probably my most loyal readers and active commentors. Thank you guys! :)

As regular comments started coming in, I became a confident blogger. People reacted to what I wrote and I enjoyed the interaction. My blog traffic improved to about 25 visitors a day in the first week of April. Despite this very modest number, I still held strongly to the believe that I could achieve a 100 a day average readership by my third month (ending 15th April).

On 14th April, the eve of Growing Happiness third month, I had… 18 visitors. It seemed nearly impossible that my traffic would increase to 3000 the next day. However, I chose to be a positive blogger.

On 15th April, my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when I checked my stats — I got nearly 7500 unique visitors through StumbleUpon overnight for my post “The Best Cure for Hiccups“!. That was about a 400 times increase in visitors to my blog within a single day! However, the traffic died down quickly. Within four days, it went from thousands to about 30 visitors, proving the volatile, unpredictable and non-committal nature of web traffic driven from social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg and Technorati.

A week later the same post got featured on Tipnut which saw my blog traffic jump to the hundreds range. But my winning streak didn’t end there. The week after that, the “how to stop hiccup” article got featured in LifeHacker, seeing my blog traffic jump to the thousands again.

MAY – Planning for Future Expansion

While I enjoyed BlogCatalog, it took a huge chunk of my time. I decide to limit my participation there to a few times a week to concentrate on writing articles for my blog (and of course, work!)

I joined Doodle Week because doodling is something I enjoy greatly. It was a really fun exercise and I even made a couple of new friends from there.

I also submitted two articles to Blog Carnival, and the post Specify Your Ideal Job Today was selected to be featured on the carnival How To Make Money Doing What You Love at Inspired Moneymaker.

I am on the look out for other ways to expanding my readership so here are some other blog traffic generation methods I may experiment with in the coming months:

Posting Frequency

Damien Riley of Postcard from the Funny Farm (and a friend from BlogCatalog!) suggested, against convention, that posting frequently can result in increased traffic to your blogs.

At the moment, I post about 3 times a week. One of these weeks, when I’m not too busy, I might try posting a few times a day and let you guys know the result. :)

Twitter

Ades of Adesblog mentioned in his post “Twitter is increasingly becoming one of the top sources of web traffic to many people’s blogs”

Since I will be embarking on an exciting project that would require me to be away from the computer for long periods of time, I’m very keen to explore other ways to keep my readers updated and Twitter seems to be the answer.

Conclusion

What conclusions about blog traffic generation can I draw from my blogging experience so far?

It takes work – Promote yourself and accept that you need the community.
Being part of a community or network such as BlogCatalog is a great way to make new friends and expand your readership. I’m thankful to have so many friends from the web!

Always be grateful.
Only 3 readers? Those 3 readers are your best friends and cheerleaders. There are millions of blogs out there and they choose to read YOUR blog! That’s a great honour!

A post that addresses a need or attempts to solve a common problem appeals to the masses. The popularity of my “how to stop hiccups” post was due to its timeless, universal appeal — everyone has hiccups now and then and would like to know the easiest, fastest way to stop it. The more timeless, useful posts you have, the more blog traffic you will get. Which is why so many professional bloggers promote the writing of “pillar posts” (See “What are Pillar Articles?” below for explanation).

You need to have patience.
Unless you have a large marketing budget or count a blogging celebrity as your drinking buddy, you have to start from scratch. And it takes time to build something from scratch.

Never underestimate the importance of having goals and the power of positive thinking.
As my experience outlined here show, it is important to have clear goals and remain positive. You’d never know what can happen overnight!

All the best!

What are Pillar Articles?

Pillar articles are not your average blog post. They are comprehensive posts which offer great value to readers and are timeless in nature. The posts are usually longer with well-researched and original content.

Resources
Pillar Posts Definition and Tips on Adesblog
Characteristics of Pillar Articles on Daily Blog Tips

The Best Cure for Hiccups
The Secret to Stopping Hiccups Lies in Warm Water

When I was younger my mother told me that the only way to cure hiccups or hiccoughs is to drink water. I’ve tried this many, many times with inconsistent results. I’ve also tried many other methods of stopping hiccups like holding my breath, pulling my ears, pinching my nose, drinking honey and getting tickled (made me feel worse). That was until B told me that the best cure for hiccups does indeed lie in drinking water but not just any water — it has to be warm.

I was a bit skeptical at first that just by simply drinking warm water alone can actually help to stop hiccups. The solution was way too simple, but his reasoning made sense — hiccups are caused by the spasming of the diaphragm (spelled wrongly as diapragm in the illustration, I know), a sheet of muscle located across the bottom the ribcage. And what do you do when a you get a muscle cramp? You apply heat. Does this warm water method really stop hiccups? You bet. It works like a charm for me every time. The hiccups will resolve in less than a minute (usually about 15 seconds). If it doesn’t work for you, what you’re drinking probably isn’t warm enough, try something warmer.

The first time I tried it, I was very surprised that it worked so fast. B was more amused that I didn’t know about this method before because he had assumed that everyone else knew it! That was about 6 years ago. For the past 6 years, each time someone else has the hicks, I tell him/her to drink warm water. And each time, they’d be surprised at how effective my method is (my method because I marketed it aggressively. ;) LOL). It then occurred to me that every one else in the world may have never heard of this very simple and effective remedy to hiccups. This must change!

So I now present you, The World, the only tried, tested and confirmed way to stop hiccups that you ever need to know – WARM WATER.

You read it here first — Try it yourself, tell your friends, spread the word.

Some other methods on how to stop hiccups are listed below. You may want to try at your own risk (a.k.a. MYTHS!?)

Other Hiccups Remedy, Tips, Tricks And Techniques

• Cure Hiccups at About.com (Video)
• 12 second Cure for Hiccups at Opiniorama
• 13 Techniques to Cure Hiccups at Howstuffworks.

Thank you for your comments and suggestions, dear readers!
You might also be interested in reading Escalating Hiccup – Stretching and Other Tried and Tested Ways to Stop Hiccups where I try some of your suggested methods to stop hiccups!