Lollipops To Cure Hiccups Invented By 13-Year-Old Girl

Lollipops To Cure Hiccups Invented By Teen

Lollipops to cure hiccups have been invented by a 13-year-old girl.

Young inventor Mallory Kievman, of Manchester, Conn., named these lollipops especially for hiccups as "Hiccupops."

The "Hiccupops" are laced with apple cider vinegar and extra sugar and are designed to overstimulate throat nerves responsible for the hiccup contractions, cancelling out "the message to hiccup."

"Lots of home remedies use something that is either very sweet or very tart. So she used both. She used the tartness of the apple cider vinegar and the sweetness of sugar. So I think it is a really ingenious concept," Dr. Robynne Chutkan, a gastroenterologist with Medstar Georgetown University Hospital, told WTOP.com.

The innovative teen developed the product in her family kitchen and is now working with a team of MBA students from the University of Connecticut to bring it to market. 

"It's a nifty invention and it has some terrific potential benefits for society," Christopher Levesque, team mentor and director of the Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, told the New York Times. "It straddles that line between an attractive, go-to product that people might like to savour and a helpful nutraceutical aid. It's innovative, born of some real ingenuity."

As stated by Levesque, the "Hiccupops" are categorized as "nutraceuticals," a cross between nutrition and pharmaceuticals. Basically, they are food items that produce health benefits, and most often using an unusual combination of ingredients, such as the apple cider vinegar and extra sugar in a lollipop.