A hot day plus some cold ice cream should equal bliss, but for some people it equals a sharp, piercing pain commonly called a brain freeze. Any sudden head pain can be alarming, but there is no need to panic in this case. Brain freeze has a simple cause, and although it can have you seeing stars, a brain freeze creates no ill effects other than that swoon-inducing stab of pain.
What Is a Brain Freeze?
A brain freeze isn’t really either. You have no nerve endings in your brain, so you aren’t actually feeling anything there. And nothing is literally freezing. The sudden sharp pain you feel in your head when you eat ice cream or drink an icy drink is technically head pain.
Causes
A brain freeze is referred pain. When cold ice cream or a slurp of an icy drink comes into contact with the nerves in the roof of your mouth, the cold overwhelms your nerve endings. This triggers blood vessels in your head to suddenly dilate, causing pain.
Effects
The effect is much like that of a sudden, extremely focused migraine. Only one in every three people experiences a brain freeze, most of them male. People who suffer migraines are also more likely to experience it. A brain freeze can be severe enough to make people stop eating ice cream altogether, but it does not cause any damage, either to your palette or to your head.
Tips and Hints
The easiest way to avoid a brain freeze is to take it slow. Ice cream is hard to resist, but large, sudden bites cause brain freeze most often. The more liquid the frozen treat is, the worse the brain freeze, as well. Pulverized ice drinks are the worst offenders, probably because the straw forces the liquid onto the roof or your mouth where the sensitive nerves are. Eat your ice cream slowly, with a spoon, and let it melt on your tongue to avoid alarming your palette.
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