Scientists Have Finally Found A Cure For A Major Medical Issue
Ali Seifi claims to have found the cure for hiccups with the Hiccaway straw.
If you frequently find yourself falling victim to a cacophonous and violent bout of hiccups, then you’re going to want to read about this medical breakthrough. A recent Futurism article sheds light on the work of Ali Seifi, a University of Texas at San Antonio professor, and self-proclaimed hiccup expert who patented the design for the HiccAway. This apparatus claims to stop hiccups dead in their tracks. If you thought we were going to suggest brain surgery or implants, then you were wrong; the HiccAway is more like a straw that regulates air pressure.
But how does it work? While the patent itself is a highly detailed and complex diagram of airflow and diaphragm pressure, the short explanation is that the HiccAway utilizes a reverse version of Bernoulli’s Principle. For those of you that are not into science, just know that this hiccup solution doesn’t involve standing on your head, or having your partner scare the bejesus out of you.
Seifi breaks down his hiccup-stopping technology for the layman to understand in the article, explaining “Imagine you have a water hose and you open the faucet. If you put half your thumb in front of the hose, the flow stays the same, but by changing the diameter the speed of the fluid changes; it ejects more.” If you still don’t understand the science behind the HiccAway, their website breaks down the process into three simple steps that are easy to follow.
Seifi’s hiccup-curing device has generated a lot of buzz on the internet, and even snagged a $250,000 investment from the one and only Mark Cuban on Shark Tank. While we’re not experts on venture capital, we think it’s safe to assume that the self-made billionaire felt passionate about the HiccAway in order to throw down some serious cash to blow this product up. We’re also not saying that Cuban is a chronic hiccup sufferer, but we’re just saying “follow the money.”
Mark Cuban is always the skeptic on ABC’s Shark Tank, but he’s never unreasonable with his entrepreneurial assessments. He’s called out con-artists and snake-oil salesmen in the past for using bogus science and statistics to sell their products, but he loved HiccAway’s hiccup solution right away. The reason the shark got behind the product was that the solution was backed by science and solves a medical problem.
If this is something that interests you, but you’re 100 percent sold on it, let’s run through some of the infamous home remedies we’ve all been using over the years to combat hiccups. Some people swear by the following: swallowing while holding their breath, breathing heavily into a paper bag, chugging water, swallowing sugar, pulling on their tongue, and gargling with water. While some of these remedies may work, we don’t recommend adding extra sugar to your diet, and nobody likes the sound of gargling.
If you’re desperate, or just a little bit curious, the patented hiccup remedy will only run you $14. Seifi is confident that the Hiccaway works, so if you’ve got some extra money, and you can’t stand having hiccups anymore, we’re talking about a low financial risk in exchange for a potentially huge reward. Aside from those nasty hiccups, what have you got to lose?
