Why do we get hiccups?

[color=blue:23gnnmjr]Just found this interesting. ” title=”Smile” /> [/color:23gnnmjr]

[i:23gnnmjr]Notice how often you swallow. Try making tally marks on a piece of paper while you’re watching a TV show, for example. Most of us swallow every few seconds. Even when we’re nowhere near food or something to drink, we’re gulping away. Your mouth is continuously producing saliva, and it has to end up somewhere. So, down it goes. Meanwhile, as you may realize, you have to keep breathing. If you don’t, well, you’ll probably miss the rest of this column.

We humans breathe through our nose or mouth. For a short way, the air moves down or up the same passage that we use for swallowing–our throat*. We have a muscular trapdoor in our throat that keeps the stuff intended for our stomach from going down our trachea, the windpipe connected to our lungs. This vital valve is our good ol’ epiglottis*. To keep inhaled air from going down your esophagus (your stomach tube), and to keep food and saliva from going down your trachea, your epiglottis is working all the time. It’s a swinging door that’s always moving and always closing pretty hard one way or the other. [/i:23gnnmjr]

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/ … BN_Hiccups