Buzz
Reader Susann reaches out asking, "What exactly causes a brain freeze?"
You might be familiar with brain freeze by other names: ice cream headache, cold-stimulus headache, or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia ("nerve pain of the sphenopalatine ganglion"), but whatever you call it, it sure is painful.
Brain freeze happens when you quickly consume cold foods or drinks. Dr. Joseph Hulihan, a former assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the Temple University Health Sciences Center, explains that ice cream is a frequent culprit behind this head pain, with roughly one third of people experiencing ice cream headaches.
So, what exactly causes this pain?
As early as the 1960s, researchers identified the same vascular mechanisms—quick constriction and expansion of blood vessels—that were thought to cause the aura and throbbing pain phases of migraine headaches.
When something cold, like ice cream, touches the roof of your mouth, the blood vessels there rapidly cool, causing them to constrict. As they warm up again, they expand, and this dilation is detected by pain receptors, sending pain signals to the brain through the trigeminal nerve. This nerve (also called the fifth cranial nerve, the fifth nerve, or just V) is responsible for facial sensation, so the brain interprets these signals as coming from the forehead, leading us to feel a headache.
In the case of brain freeze, we feel pain in an area of the body that is distant from where the actual injury or pain stimulus occurs. This phenomenon, called "referred pain," is why people often feel discomfort in their neck, shoulders, or back during a heart attack, rather than in their chest.
To avoid brain freeze, try these tips:
• Take it slow. Eating or drinking cold foods more slowly gives your mouth a chance to adjust to the temperature.
• Hold cold food or drink in the front of your mouth and let it warm up a bit before swallowing.
• Head to warmer surroundings. Since brain freeze needs a cold environment to occur, it's nearly impossible if you're already feeling chilly.
Back to Susann's case. Maybe some of you can shed light on this. When she eats ice cream, it's not her brain that freezes but her back. "I get a back freeze," she says. "What's going on with that?" My guess is that it's some sort of neurological quirk, where her brain interprets the cold sensation and pain signals as coming from her back. But I'm no doctor, just someone who plays one on the internet. Anyone with more expertise have a better explanation?
[Image courtesy of Donuts4Dinner]
