By Anagha Rao
You’ve probably experienced that awful headache when you eat your ice cream or cold food too fast, right? This phenomenon is referred to as Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia, or brain freeze.
When a person experiences brain freeze, they feel a headache in the frontal lobe right behind the forehead. The headache may range from dull to throbbing. Unlike other headaches such as migraines or sinus headaches, a brain freeze does not cause any other symptoms.
The primary cause of brain freeze is when we consume something cold too fast. Brain freezes are more common in children because they haven’t learned to slow down when eating a cold treat such as ice cream or a cake pop. But why does this happen? When we consume cold treats, our brain senses a sudden decrease in temperature in the mouth and the throat. This activates the trigeminal nerve, which is responsible for carrying sensory information from the face to the brain and causes the blood vessels in the head to shrink. Due to the sudden shrinkage of blood vessels, the brain sends more blood to warm the affected area and expand the blood vessels. This sudden change of blood vessel size is what causes the sudden pain in your head.
However, not all people get brain freeze. “Some people’s trigeminal nerve is more sensitive than others, making them more likely to experience brain freeze,” says Regina Krel, M.D, director of the Headache Center at Hackensack University Medical Center. Scientists also believe that women who experience migraines are twice as likely to experience brain freezes.
Most brain freezes typically go away automatically within 30 seconds. If you experience brain freeze often, try eating cold foods a little slower. It’s also a good idea to have some warm water on standby to warm up the mouth and prevent these headaches. Before you eat cold foods, leaving them out at room temperature for approximately 30 seconds is a great way to make sure you don’t eat foods that are too cold.
A simple trick to rid of brain freeze is pushing your tongue against the roof of your mouth for 30-60 seconds. The reason why this works is that the heat from the tongue transfers energy to the sinuses behind the nose and warm up the nerve endings on the roof of the mouth.
Educational Content
What is a brain freeze?
A brain freeze is a type of serious but temporary headache felt behind the forehead-near the frontal lobe-that happens to almost everyone.
How do you prevent a brain freeze?
The cure for brain freeze is very simple. Pushing your tongue against the roof of the mouth for 30-60 seconds is a great remedy for brain freeze.
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