Medical Centric

ICE-CREAM HEADACHES

Men's Health, Women's Health / By

ICE-CREAM HEADACHES

  • Ice cream headaches are brief, stabbing headaches that can happen when you eat, drink or inhale something cold.
  • Biting into an ice cream cone is a common trigger, but eating or drinking other frosty items, such as ice pops and slushy frozen drinks, can have the same “brain-freeze” effect.
  • Officially known as cold stimulus headaches, they can also occur when you suddenly expose your unprotected head to cold temperatures, such as by diving into cold water.
  • No one is quite sure what causes the actual pain, but it is thought that a combination of direct stimulation of temperature-sensitive nerves plus the cold’s effects on blood vessels running along the roof of the mouth.
  • The good news: Most ice cream headaches are gone as quickly as they develop.

Symptoms

Symptoms of an ice cream headache include:

  • Sharp, stabbing pain in the forehead
  • Pain that peaks about 20 to 60 seconds after it begins and goes away in about the same time
  • Pain that rarely lasts longer than five minutes

Causes

  • It’s not just ice cream; any cold stimulus can cause the nerve pain that results in the sensation of a brain freeze.
  • Brain freeze is caused by:
  • Cooling of the capillaries of the sinuses by a cold stimulus, which results in vasoconstriction (a narrowing of the blood vessels).
  • A quick rewarming by a warm stimulus such as the air, which results in vasodilation (a widening of the blood vessels).
  • These rapid changes near the sensitive nerves in the palate create the sensation of brain freeze.
  • The proximity of very sensitive nerves and the extreme stimuli changes are what cause the nerves to react.

Cure

  • The sensation is not serious but can be very unpleasant. Brain freeze treatments include:
  • drinking some warm water
  • pushing the tongue to the roof of the mouth, which helps warm the area
  • covering the mouth and nose with the hands and breathing rapidly to increase the flow of warm air to the palate
  • A preventative cure is reducing the cold stimuli on the palate, which means avoiding large amounts of cold food or drink at once.

Risk factors

  • Ice cream headaches can affect anyone.
  • You might be more susceptible to ice cream headaches or have more-severe ice cream headaches if you’re prone to migraines.

Prevention

  • The best way to avoid getting ice cream headaches is to avoid the cold food or drinks or exposure to cold that causes them.