A few months ago, I went through a small depressive episode that made me think after a bout of crying. About a half hour afterwards, I was stricken with a case of hiccups. One of my coping mechanisms is that I will find a small concept and expand on it, so I went with it when I thought about why we might get hiccups after crying or even after experiencing an anxiety attack.
I pondered on it for a few weeks after, deducing my own theory before actually looking into it. My experience in the past 20-something years of my life is that I’ve experienced this a few times. Surely, we’ve all experienced hiccups in our childhood. Our parents might have told us that means we’re growing (mine did at least). However, it’s different when we’re fully grown and we experience hiccups.
Most of us know the basic mechanics behind hiccups, but if you don’t- it’s perfectly fine, I’m going to give you a simple run-down.
Essentially, hiccups occur after an intake of air that gets trapped after being swallowed. Have you ever been told that you swallowed too much air when you get hiccups?
So, why do you hiccup after an episode of crying?
Depending on how hard you cry, you may have hyperventilated or gasped in some sort of way that would have trapped some air in your lungs and so the only way to get the air up and out is to cause contractions in the diaphragm that help push the air out. That’s the basic mechanics anyway!
Let me know in the comments if you have ever noticed hiccups after crying. Don’t be ashamed either, I’ll be the first to full my admit that it still happens to me sometimes.
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