With the Creamery only a walk away, it’s a given that ice cream will regular staple in our diets, but when we eat too much of Peachy Paterno or Death by Chocolate, why is that we get brain freezes from too much ice cream?
Ocean Beach, California
Brain freezes, or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, occur because when you eat ice cream or something just as cold, when it touches the top of your mouth, it causes the blood vessels there to dilate. “The dilation of the blood vessels triggers pain receptors, which release pain-causing prostaglandins, increase sensitivity to further pain, and produce inflammation while sending signals through the trigeminal nerve to alert the brain to the problem,”, which is the reason for why you get “brain freezes” says chemistry.about.com. Simply, the blood vessels on the roof of your mouth become larger causing the receptors there to identify the pain this causes, and bam the headache.
Ways to prevent an ice cream headache? Warming the top of your mouth with your tongue works, where the heat your tongue naturally produces will transfer to warm up the roof of your mouth until both parts are equivalent in heat. Or if you’d like to avoid the great ice cream freeze all together, “simply eating cold foods more slowly can help prevent brain freeze” or “arming foods up a tiny bit in the front of your mouth before swallowing them”, according to kidshealth.org.
Eating ice cream should always be an enjoyable experience, so try and savor each bite and save yourself from a brain freeze by eating slowly or drinking something slightly warmer as you eat your favorite freezing cold treat.
Work cited:
http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/f/how-brain-freeze-works.htm
http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/ice_cream_headache.html
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/03/156155297/when-ice-cream-attacks-the-mystery-of-brain-freeze
Brain freeze actually isn’t freezing the brain at all, it just freezes the nerves in the nasal cavity, and sometimes in the mouth, as Katherine said. So is brain freeze really that dangerous? According to Neurosurgeon Rafael Tamargo, the pain felt in a brain freeze, like the same pain felt during a migraine, is only in the region of the mouth and not in the brain at all. Ice cream cannot actually cool the brain down to the point of permanent brain damage. So if you like to eat ice cream fast, you won’t be permanently brain damaged from a brain freeze!
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/q-can-“brain-freeze”-cause-long-term-brain-damage
I do not think that brain freezes come from eating too much ice cream or too much of a certain flavor. You said ways to prevent an ice cream headache and then named a few examples. One I think is waiting for the ice cream to become a little warmer rather than warming the top of your tongue. I think this is a great topic because I have never ward or read about anyone analyzing why we get brain freeze. I have gotten brain freeze from water ice as well as ice cream. I agree that eating ice cream should be an enjoyable experience and to find ways to cope with brain freeze will only help make eating ice cream that much better.
I’ve always gotten really bad brain freezes when I’ve eaten ice-cream. Something that works for me to get rid of them is to put my thumb on the roof of my mouth. This makes sense now because I know that it is warming up the dilated blood vessels there. It’s funny that we interpret the pain as pain in our brain when it really isn’t at all.
I have my own personal take on this due to the fact I have never received a brain freeze, instead I get neck freezes. This got me thinking, why do I get neck freezes instead of brain freezes? Well my bodies reaction actually has to do with my sternocleidomastoid, which is where I am affected the most. It also affects the eyelids and can lead to sensitive eyes. This explains why during the worst of allergy seasons my eyes become red and watery once I am surrounded by pollen.
http://www.pressurepointer.com/SCM_trigger_points.htm
http://www.ehow.com/how_2101279_stiff-neck-stretching-sternocleidomastoid-muscle.html#page=1