Many people experience a sudden, excruciating, and brief headache after eating something cold. However, headaches from eating ice cream, or brain freeze, is more of an unpleasant quirk.
Cold stimuli headaches are brief and stabbing, and can occur when we eat, drink, or inhale something cold. Eating an ice cream cone is a common trigger, but eating or drinking other frozen items, such as popsicles, slushies, and half-melted iced drinks, can have the same brain-freeze effect.
Known officially as cold-stimulus headache , this pain can also occur when the unprotected head is suddenly exposed to cold temperatures, such as when diving in cold water. Fortunately, most cold stimulus headaches go away as quickly as they start.
Cold alters blood flow
Cold stimulus headaches occur when you expose your head to sudden, extreme cold or if something cold moves across the roof of your mouth and back of your throat, such as when you quickly grab ice cream or a cold drink. Scientists have doubts about the exact mechanism that causes this pain.
One theory is that the cold temporarily alters blood flow in the nervous system, causing a brief headache. Blood vessels constrict to prevent loss of body heat and then relax again to allow blood flow to rise, causing a sensation of pain that goes away once the body adjusts to the change in temperature.
Nerves in the sphenopalatine ganglion, around the trigeminal nerve, are thought to be responsible for brain freeze. In addition to this, there are nerves inside the nose that cause a headache. A likely reason for its high sensitivity is to protect the brain.
How to relieve it quickly?
Anyone can get brain freeze. Brain freeze might be a bigger risk in kids because they don’t know how to slow down when they eat fun foods, like popsicles. Brain freezes come and go quickly, unlike other headaches. In most cases, the attack lasts only a few seconds to two minutes. This condition resolves itself without the need for medication or rest.
If these headaches come on suddenly, there is a way to cut it short: by trying to bring the temperature of the mouth and throat back to normal. Some of the most common tricks are:
- Stop eating or drinking the cold food, or remove it from the mouth.
- Drink a warm or room temperature liquid (neither hot nor cold).
- Press the tongue or thumb against the palate to transfer heat.
Logically, the only way to prevent brain freeze is to avoid sudden and extreme temperature changes in the mouth, throat, and head. For example, avoid freezing foods, or eating and drinking very cold things slowly.
