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"Forget holding your breath or drinking water upside down. One startup wants to cure your pesky hiccups with candy suckers. \nMallory Kievman, a 13-year-old from Manchester, Conn., invented the lollipop in her kitchen after a bout of annoying hiccups. 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.\"\nKievman 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 1970s 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. \nKievman's been touring a variety of competitions with her startup invention \u2014 and the idea has been well-received. At the Connecticut Innovation Competition for kids, Hiccupops was recognized for its \"innovation and patentability,\" states the Times article. Kievman has also taken Hiccupops to a couple Connecticut economic and innovation summits. \nThis summer, the eighth grader will be getting help from MBA students at the University of Connecticut, who will help her launch the product nationwide. Also helping \u2014 her dad. In the Times article, Mallory reportedly said her dad handles \"a lot of the business stuff. And he\u2019s also helping me handle stuff like using the stove.\u201D \nWhat do you think of Hiccupops? What qualities does any startup idea need to \"make it\"? Tell us in the comments. \n\u202APhoto courtesy of iStockphoto, lostinyonkers \u202C"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/05/04/hiccupops-startup/>