This week: Hiccups
Poor old Chris Sands. The 24-year-old singer from Lincoln, has been hiccupping for 15 months, even in his sleep. He is now hoping an operation can cure the problem. But with this extraordinary condition, there are no clear answers.

Fifteen months: that must be a record. Actually, it's nowhere near the world record for hiccupping. That accolade was earned by one Charles Osborne, of Iowa, who Guinness certified as having hiccupped for 68 years, from 1922 to 1990. He died a year after they stopped. During the first few decades, he hiccupped 40 times a minute, though it later slowed to 20 a minute.

That's millions of hiccups! Surely his throat must have been bleeding?

Bleeding throats are not a documented consequence of persistent hiccups (lasting more than 48 hours), but getting tired and upset certainly is. Hiccupping can also interfere with eating and drinking.

So what is a hiccup, then? Hiccups result from an involuntary spasm of the diaphragm, the main muscle involved in breathing. Air is sucked into the lungs, causing the valve (glottis) above the voicebox, to snap shut - this is what causes the characteristic noise.

What makes your diaphragm spasm like that? There are a number of possible triggers. NHS Direct lists the following: stretching of the stomach after rapid eating or swallowing of air or fizzy drinks; indigestion, usually due to eating spicy food; sudden changes of air temperature; very hot or cold food or drink; or alcohol and excess smoking. Oh, and you can laugh yourself into hiccups as well.

So why do they persist with certain people? Usually, persistent hiccups come on at the sa me time as heartburn or acid reflux, so there's a link there - in fact, that may be the cause in Chris Sands's case. He has a faulty valve at the top of his stomach, causing acid to rise up his oesophagus. Surgeons are looking at trying to tighten that valve with keyhole surgery.

In 2004, a Texan man who had been hiccupping for a year had a pioneering operation to fit a device to his vagus nerve, which was thought to be behaving irregularly following a stroke. Before the operation, he was having 10 painkilling injections a day, or making himself vomit, to bring some relief; afterwards, the hiccups stopped. For the rest of us, luckily, a half-hour spell of the hiccups is about as bad as it gets.

Which brings us on to the big question: does drinking out of the wrong side of a glass actually work? Funnily enough, it sometimes does. There is no definitive explanation as to why, though it may be linked to the physical contortion involved, interrupting the hiccup reflex.

As hiccups come on suddenly, shock tactics can send them packing just as quickly: other popular cures backed by anecdotal evidence include giving someone a surprise, biting on a lemon or piece of raw ginger, eating something very cold like ice or ice cream, or holding your breath for a short period - the latter was first documented as a cure by Plato.

None of it has worked for Chris Sands, though: he says he's tried drinking water about a hundred different ways, with no success. Hopefully after his surgery he can enjoy a good night's sleep.