Brain freeze, or ice cream headache, affects up to 1/3 of the population and is caused by a combination of the body’s reaction to cold stimuli, the freezing of nerves above the palate, and a sudden rush of warm blood to the brain. Placing the tongue on the roof of the mouth or drinking warm water can help alleviate the pain.
One minute you’re enjoying your favorite frozen drink or ice cream cone, and the next minute you’re experiencing a throbbing headache that feels like it’s coming from the center of your skull. This is the dreaded phenomenon known as brain freeze or ice cream headaches. Some experts suggest that up to 1/3 of the population is susceptible to this condition, especially when eating a frozen bite too quickly on a hot day. The pain is similar to that of a migraine, but luckily most attacks last 30 seconds or less.
So what actually causes brain freeze? Researchers suggest it’s a combination of your body’s overreaction to cold stimuli, freezing a group of nerves above the palate, and a sudden rush of warm blood to the brain. Eating all that ice cream or sludgy drink too fast didn’t help matters either. Indeed, it was the initial contact between the cold food and the palate that set all this activity in motion.
When you took an extra bite of ice cream, some of it reached your hard palate, also known as hard palate. Behind this hard palate is a group of nerves that act as a sort of protective thermostat for your brain. The main nerve is called the sphenopalatine nerve and is extremely sensitive to sudden changes in temperature. Once ice cream or other frozen food causes the sphenopalatine nerve to cool, it sends a warning to the other nerves in the cluster. Essentially, your brain has now been told to expect a hard freeze, so it better prepare for it.
Your brain doesn’t actually lock down during the episode, but the sphenopalatine nerve group didn’t know that at the time. The blood vessels surrounding the brain suddenly constrict as a reaction to cold stimuli, or more precisely, they overreact. The result for you is a pounding headache that seems to radiate from the sinus area or behind your eyes. The pain is not necessarily triggered by the dilation of blood vessels, but by the rush of warm blood forcing the vessels back open.
While all of these blood vessels are busy narrowing and reopening with the warm blood, the nerves also contribute to the pain. Pain receptors near the sphenopalatine nerve cluster sense freezing of the palate, but the pain itself is referred to another area deeper in the skull. This is why you feel your brain freezing deep inside your head and not your palate.
One of the quickest ways to shorten the duration of a brain freeze is to place your tongue on the roof of your mouth to warm up the palate. Once the palate warms up again, the nerve groups are no longer stimulated and will override the warning. Drinking sips of warm water will also minimize the effects of brain freeze, as will eating frozen foods slowly and avoiding palate contact.
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