Nothing beats cold ice cream on a hot day.
But be warned!
Eat too fast, and you risk an attack of the dreaded, the awful, the agonizing… brain freeze!
Or, to give it its medical name, sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.
sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia
You know – that sudden headache people get after eating or drinking something cold.
But here's a curious question…
What causes brain freeze?
What causes brain freeze?
Well, surprisingly, no one’s 100% sure.
But one thing’s for certain – your brain doesn’t actually freeze.
One theory is that when you slurp something icy, it makes the top of your mouth really cold, really quickly, and this sudden drop in temperature causes nearby blood vessels to shrink.
Your body then sends more blood to warm them up... and the vessels quickly expand again.
These sudden changes trigger a sharp pain – but instead of feeling it in your mouth, you feel it in your forehead or temples.
That’s because the nerve that carries the pain signal to your brain is also responsible for sensing pain in other parts of your face.
So, when the signal arrives, your brain can’t quite work out where the feeling started and mistakes pain from near the top of the mouth for pain from around the forehead.
So, the theory is that when you eat or drink something cold, it causes blood vessels to shrink then expand.
This triggers a sudden pain in your mouth.
But because of the way your facial nerve works, your brain mistakes it for a pain in your forehead.
Got it?
Great – another curious question answered!