Brain Freeze Science: Why Cold Treats Give You a Headache

Slurp, slurp. "Mmm. This Margarita is amazing!" Five seconds later: "Ahhhh. My head!" she exclaims, as she places her palm on her forehead and squeezes her eyes shut. - That my friends is brain freeze, the common occurrence of getting a headache after eating or drinking something cold. In fact, brain freeze is so common that the British Medical Journal (BMJ) states that one third of all headaches come from, not screaming kids or on-the-job-stress, but ice cream.

What is Brain Freeze?
Also referred to as "ice cream headache" brain freeze is just the common, layman's term for what scientists dub sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. Yeah, it's just easier to say brain freeze.

Brain freeze happens within a few seconds after eating or drinking something cold, such as the aforementioned margarita, or perhaps a Slurpee (more on that later), ice cream, a milkshake, a popsicle, or really anything else that is borderline freezing.

According to the British Medical Journal (BMJ), brain freeze is actually the result of speaking or breathing via the mouth after consuming something cold, so it's not the cold itself that causes the ice cream headache, but the body's reaction. More scientifically, explains BMJ, the body's responds to cold environments by vasoconstricting the peripheral vasculature, which reduces the diameter of blood vessels. This then reduces the blood flow to that area as a defense to the body losing body heat. So, brain freeze really is a biological response to protect us. Interesting, huh? But the process continues-we didn't get the pain yet.

So, after this vasoconstriction, the blood vessels return to their normal state, which results in a massive dilation of the arteries that supply blood to the palate. So, the nerves in palate sense this as pain and transmit that sensation back to the trigeminal ganglia, or in layman's terms, our head. So, all this causes that stabbing pain we feel in the forehead and other parts of our head.

How to Get Rid of an Ice Cream Headache
BMJ, the British Medical Journal, collects what they call "Rapid Responses" to their journal articles. In the 1999 article brain freeze referenced above, readers made various comments on ways to make brain freeze disappear.

--The most commonly mentioned idea was to press the tongue to the roof of the mouth, which helps create warmth in the area experience all that constricting of the blood vessels.
--Someone else suggested placing an ice cube on the inner wrist, where the veins show. I conclude that maybe this evens out the temperature?
--A few people mentioned swallowing a pinch of salt.
--Someone suggests grabbing your throat and keeping your warm hand there until the headache disappears.
--Finally, someone suggest to simply burp on cue and the ice cream headache is gone.

Brain Freeze as Entertainment with a little help from the Slurpee
A young man created a website TheBrainFreeze.com. He created a video when he was eleven-years-old of people getting brain freeze. Quite the clever boy. He had a half-dozen or so people consume an entire Slurpee (quickly) and then recorded their reactions. The video is set to music, so viewers get the see the animated responses of these average people slam a Slurpee. TheBrainFreeze.com is a one-page simple website, with an extremely entertaining video.

So now that you know what brain freeze is and how to cure it, go slurp on a Margarita or some mint chocolate chip.

Resources:

BMJ- http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/314/7091/1364