Girl who invented cure for hiccups

After testing about folk remedies, Kievman picked three of her favorites — sugar, apple cider vinegar, and lollipops — and combined them. I'm still "tweaking the taste," she tells The New York Times , but the combination of ingredients "triggers a set of nerves in your throat and mouth that are responsible for the hiccup reflex arc It basically over-stimulates those nerves and cancels out the message to hiccup. Is this a viable commercial product?

Let's put it this way, says entrepreneur and angel investor Danny Briere. How many employees does Hiccupops have? Two , so far. Kievman is listed in the company's organizational chart as CEO and head of research and development. How did a year-old manage all this? A lot of hard work, and a lot of help. Kievman met Briere, founder of small-business incubator Startup Connecticut, a year ago at the Connecticut Invention Convention, a sort of talent fair for young tinkerers.

Kievman won prizes for innovation and patentability. The pops are made with apple cider vinegar and sugar. The vinegar, she told the New York Times , overstimulates the nerves in your throat responsible for hiccups and "cancels out the message to hiccup. Kievman told Mashable she did tons of research online to learn everything there is to know about hiccups, and then combined those ideas with her own inventiveness.

She read everything from research on cats that showed how to incite hiccups, to clinical trials from the s that tested the use of sugar on the back of the tongue it actually worked in stopping sporadic hiccups in 18 of 20 patients. As for using apple cider vinegar, "I was reading an article somewhere about uses for vinegar and apple cider vinegar was in that story for getting rid of hiccups," she recalled.

So Kievman put the vinegar into her patent-pending portable pops. Kievman's been touring a variety of competitions with her startup invention - and the idea has been well-received. At the Connecticut Innovation Competition for kids, Hiccupops was recognised for its "innovation and patentability," states the Times article.

Mee began hiccuping on Jan. Accompanied by deep pains in her chest, the hiccups were relentless. Over the course of three weeks, she tried every folk remedy to no avail, and numerous doctors did what they could, but nothing worked. Having exhausted home remedies and conventional medicine, Robidoux turned to the media, hoping to appeal to someone — anyone — who might have a cure. The Tampa Bay Times sent a reporter to speak with the family and to film a video for their website. The video went viral, and immediately, Jennifer Mee was a sensation.

The segment, however, which found them talking with Meredith Vieira, Matt Lauer, and gastroenterologist Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa, may have done more harm than good. During the segment, Mee hiccuped repeatedly, except when she spoke.

Because she had stopped hiccuping as she spoke, many around the country thought she was faking, and Internet trolls descended while the media frenzy grew.

The creator of a hiccup-curing invention called the Hic-Cup offered to fly from Pennsylvania for a day to see if it worked on Mee. As the fame faded, Mee found that attention instead on the streets, Phelps writes, where she prided herself on being a hustler.