Have you ever experienced a sudden headache when eating or drinking something very cold? This is ‘brain freeze’ sometimes called an ‘ice-cream headache’. The medical term for this type of headache is ‘sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia’ , which is a mouthful, so let’s just stick with brain freeze, okay? When something cold touches the roof of your mouth (your palate), the sudden temperature change stimulates nerves to cause rapid expansion and swelling of blood vessels. This is an attempt to direct blood to the area and warm it back up. The expansion, however, triggers the pain receptors, increasing sensitivity to further pain, and produce inflammation while sending signals through the trigeminal nerve to alert the brain to the problem. Because the trigeminal nerve also senses facial pain, the brain interprets the pain signal as coming from the forehead. This is called ‘referred pain’ since the cause of the pain is in a different location from where you feel it. Brain freeze typically hits about 10 seconds after chilling your palate and lasts about half a minute. Only one third of people experience brain freeze from eating something cold, though most people are prone to a related headache from sudden exposure to a very cold climate. So, eating ice-cream slowly is less likely to cause brain freeze then wolfing it down! If you are eating or drinking something cold, it also helps to keep your mouth cold rather than allow it to warm up. However, one of the quickest ways to ease the pain of brain freeze is to warm your palate with your tongue. Don’t follow that remedy with another scoop of ice cream though!
YUMMMM!!!!!!
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