Curing hiccups with chocolate

Q. The absolute best cure I’ve ever found for hiccups is chocolate. Don’t believe me? Try it. Keep some 70 percent to 90 percent cocoa dark chocolate on hand. Smooth a bite of the chocolate on the roof of your mouth and be amazed at how fast your hiccups disappear! Don’t worry about chocolate making you fat. Unsweetened dark chocolate is beneficial. (Milk chocolate, though, is not good for dieters.) You’ll thank me for this cure.

A. We first heard about using chocolate as a home remedy for hiccups from a listener who called our radio show. Her Danish grandmother had always dispensed a few chocolate chips to a child with hiccups.

We have since heard from others who agree that chocolate can help stop hiccups. Here’s one reader’s story: “I discovered this remedy one day after repeated bouts of hiccups. I became aggravated and decided that if I was going to have them, I was going to have them with chocolate. They stopped immediately, much to my surprise. The chocolate remedy has been foolproof for years now.”