Dax Shepard recently shared two videos to Instagram where he’s hiccupping. His wife Kristen Bell is taping him and asks him how it’s going. In the first video he’s hiccupping as he explains that he’s been having hiccups for 20 hours almost, with an hour or two that they went away. In the next video Dax looks miserable, says it’s escalated and that he’s been vomiting. In the caption he wrote that he was hiccupping for 50 hours but that he’s been hiccup free for five days. I’m going to let People explain it because I don’t want to transcribe the video and that’s where I first saw this story:
In the first clip, Shepard’s wife Kristen Bell approaches her seemingly uncomfortable husband with a camera and asks, “How’s it going?”
“It’s still funny,” he replies, though he initially doesn’t crack a smile. Bell, 41, begins to giggle behind the camera, and Shepard chuckles in response.
[Shepard] says his hiccups had begun around 9 p.m. nearly 24 hours prior. Bell says she could hear Shepard hiccuping “all night long.”
“They went away for stretches today,” he explains, clearing his throat multiple times as he speaks. “A couple hours in the afternoon, and I want to say there was an hour of freedom [elsewhere].”
In the second clip, Shepard says his condition has “escalated” to the point of doing “a good deal of hiccup-induced puking.”
“Every breath,” he says as he attempts to collect himself.
I googled “hiccups side effect of” and the first suggested search term was “steroids.” You know where I’m going with this. Dax has admitted being on “heavy testosterone” to bulk up just because he wanted to, not for a role or anything. The longest I’ve ever had hiccups was probably 45 minutes and it wasn’t fun at all. Watching the videos made me feel sympathetically sick to my stomach. I wouldn’t wish chronic hiccups on anyone (except Trump, Tucker Carlson, Piers Morgan, JK Rowling, Josh Duggar – ok that’s not true), it sounds awful. I’m just saying there might be a reason for it other than it just being random. He’s a podcaster and depending on when he got this it may have kept him from working. Plus, and I mean this sincerely, it’s hard to get medical care now because antivaxxer covid patients are clogging up the hospitals. I’m glad to hear he’s OK now.
The Today Show has some tips from an expert on how to stop hiccupping, including drinking water while trying not to breathe in and breathing into a paper bag. The key is to increase the CO2 in your bloodstream. I’m sure he tried them all.
I’ve listened to several episodes of his podcast and enjoyed them.
That could actually be a sign of something more dangerous, I forget what but we had a patient come in who had them for about 36 hours, we had to give him shots to stop them, I think Benadryl and something else. What really shocked me is I was having hiccups as I triaged him, he started laughing when I asked him what brought him in, then we lost it laughing at the timing!
I read an article about one person whose main covid symptom was hiccups that would not go away.
When I read this story yesterday I immediately Googled the same thing – steroids and hiccups. He’s kind of an idiot IMHO.
He’s such an addict. He seems to have a decent program but he thinks he’s smart enough to manage his addictions when it’s anything other than booze and coke. He relapsed on opioids really recently and went more or less straight into “bodybuilding “. I hope he can find peace within and stop looking outside of himself for it. His poor family
I drink water from the other side of the cup! It involves leaning over and is kind of hard to do, but it is the only thing that has ever really helped me. I hate the hiccups!! I always think about seeing a man in the guiness book of world records who had them for like 50 years or more. nightmare
I have a close friend whose first signs of Brain Cancer (gioblastoma, specifically) were non stop hiccups so I hope that it isn’t something that serious. We thought it was funny at first but unfortunately the end result was devastating.
I get the hiccups like this (have since I was a kid) every few months. They are LOUD and it’s AWFUL. Apologies to anyone within earshot.
My now 23-year old daughter has had long-lasting hiccups from the time she was born. It was miserable when she was a baby. When she was around 13, my brother told me to try a few drops of Angostura bitters in a 6-8 oz glass of room temp water-drink all at once. I thought he was full of bunk but we tried it and whaddayaknow? It’s a miracle cure! It’s my go-to now-it saved the day when I was about to speak to a large audience for work.
That poor guy. I’ve always been one of those people that gets them pretty bad. Everyone has a suggested remedy but none worked for me except to hold my breath while drinking water until they go away. Sometimes it takes several minutes and I have to drink tiny bits of water so I don’t end up chugging a liter of water. Interesting to hear it has to do with CO2 in the bloodstream – but that makes sense because holding my breath alone doesn’t work nor does just drinking water, it has to be both together!
omg he aged so much since i last looked at photos of him. he looks sick. really worrysome
Yeah, he does not look healthy..
Intractable hiccups that aren’t caused by an underlying condition respond well to a muscle relaxer called baclofen. My ex had horrible hiccups that lasted for hours and sometimes even longer. Turns out the answer was already in the medicine cabinet, the muscle relaxer that I used occasionally for my farked up back.
Clinical studies have been done re baclofen and intractable hiccups by the NIH and other reputable organizations. If anyone reading this suffers with this condition or knows anyone who does, talk to your doc about using baclofen to help manage it.
And my apologies for that sounding like an ad for the drug. It does work though.
I’m a kidney/liver transplant patient. When I was recovering from the transplant surgery in the hospital I was struck down with terrible hiccups off and on for days. It was tripped by the liver surgery in particular. They tried two different medications, the second being an antipsychotic drug called Thorazine. It worked!!