With summer time just around the corner, it’s time to tackle the headiest of summer health issues. Namely: the dreaded brain freeze.
Nearly every ice cream lover has suffered the phenomenon, technically known as a cold-stimulus headache. It’s that momentary burst of sudden, acute pain you feel right behind your forehead, after eating ice cream or guzzling an icy drink too quickly.
The pain from a “brain freeze” is a combination of dilated vessels and input from Cranial Nerve V, which detects sensation in the face, sinuses and forehead, explains Dr. John Webb of St. Elizabeth Physicians Neurology. Because of this combination, ice cream eaters don’t feel pain in their mouth, where the stimulus occurs, but rather as “referred pain” behind the forehead.
Brain freezes are an inconvenience for the ice-cream loving public ““ Dr. Webb advises those who suffer from them to limit their consumption or eat their ice cream more slowly to prevent the pain ““ but they do offer a potential benefit.
Because the headaches are easy to induce and rapidly subside without the use of drugs, researchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs, National University of Ireland Galway and the New Jersey War Related Illness and Injury Study Center used them as a proxy in hopes of better understanding migraines, posttraumatic headaches, and other types of headaches.
In a small study, a group of healthy adult volunteers were asked to sip ice water through straw pressed against their upper palate while researchers monitored blood flow to their brains. Researchers found that when subjects experienced a brain freeze, one particular artery, called the anterior cerebral artery, rapidly dilated and flooded the brain with blood. The blood vessel constricted as subjects’ pain receded. Researchers speculate the dilation and quick constriction may be a type of self-defense for the brain and that similar changes in blood flow may be a factor with other types of headaches. If so, finding ways to control blood flow might offer new treatments for headache sufferers.
