Brain Freeze

I love ice-cream! So the other day I was happily drinking a freezing cold ice-cream smoothie when it happened …. brain freeze …. arrrgggggh.

Lots of headaches cause pain as a result of a change to the blood flow in your head and this is exactly why a brain freeze or ice cream headache (scientific name sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia) hurts. When you eat something really cold and it touches the roof of your mouth your blood vessels automatically vasoconstrict (get smaller) so less blood goes near the cold area. This changes the blood flow in your head and so you get a splitting headache really quickly. A quick cure is to push your tongue to the roof of your mouth. This makes it warmer which makes the blood vessels go back to their regular size and in turn normal blood flow is restored making the headache go away.

Tags: Biology, Physiology, Science, Theory