Veda #72 : Brainfreeze

Day 72
"What caused a headache whenever we ate cold or frozen food like ice cream?"
One minute you're enjoying your favorite frozen beverage or ice cream cone, and the next minute you're experiencing a headache which seems to originate from the middle of your skull. This is the dreaded phenomenon known as "brain freeze," or ice cream headache. Some experts suggest that up to 1/3 of the population is susceptible to brain freeze, especially when eating a frozen treat too quickly on a warm day. The pain of brain freeze is similar to that of a migraine headache. Why did this occur?

Dr. Robert Smith, founder of the Cincinnati Headache Center at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, experimented with crushed ice applied to different parts of his mouth to see what set off the pains. The culprit, his research indicates, is at the back of the palate, from which a mass of nerves called the sphenopalatine ganglion stretches into the head. The nerves control the dilation and contraction of blood vessels, and dilated blood vessels in the head are known to cause several kinds of headaches.

So what actually causes brain freeze? Researchers suggest it is a combination of your body's overreaction to cold stimuli, freezing of a cluster of nerves above the palate and a sudden influx of warm blood to the brain. It was the initial contact between the cold food and the roof of your mouth which set all of this brain freeze activity in motion. Other researchers have suggested that this is because in hot weather, a person tends to gulp cold drinks or wolf down lemonade so that the cold stuff is more likely to hit the palate hard. The result for you is a pounding headache which seems to radiate from the sinus area or behind your eyes. The pain is not necessarily triggered by the dilation of the blood vessels, but by the influx of warm blood which forces the vessels open again.
(n.b: now you know why i always close and massage my eyes when this event occured, pang. hwahaha)

Ways to avoid the brainfreeze might be to let the ice cream warm up in the front of the mouth before swallowing or to swallow it in such a way that it does not linger on the palate.