Why isn’t there enough information on brain freeze?

Picture this: it is a hot summer day and you decide to get ice cream. Since it is   hot you try and eat the ice cream quickly but then all you feel is a sudden rush of pain in your head causing you to stop eating the ice cream. Have you ever wondered why does this happen? I do too and I decided to do some research on it. According to a journal article on the website medical news today where it explains brain freeze happens when something cold such as ice cream hits the roof of the mouth. The scientists from Harvard wanted to investigate and see why does brain freeze happen and they conducted an experiment to find out. The experiment included 13 adults and all they had to do was drink cold water with a straw.  The scientists found that “the sensation of brain freeze appears to be caused by a dramatic and sudden increase in blood flow through the brain’s anterior cerebral artery. As soon as the artery constricted, the brain-freeze pain sensation wore off.” (Norqvist) I did not know this. As someone who is not a scientist my presumption of the cause of brain freeze was when your brain can feel the coldness.  I acknowledge that there experiment only included a small number of adults and did not have a group drink the water without a straw. It would be better if there were a larger experiment to conduct the experiment to see if the scientist’s results are correct. The results cannot be held accountable as correct because it was not a large enough experiment and it only did one thing with the group not thinking of any other variables. I did not find any other experiment that tested for brain freeze so I cannot say or believe this to be true. My question is what would Andrew think of this? would he agree with the scientists from Harvard or would he want a larger experiment? It captures my attention that there is not much scientific data for something such as getting a brain freeze. I acknowledge there is someone else that has blogged about this but I have different questions.

Nordqvist, Joseph. “Brain Freeze: What Is It? Scientists Explain.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon International, 04 June 2015. Web. 05 Oct. 2016.

2 thoughts on “Why isn’t there enough information on brain freeze?

  1. Katherine Guerney

    I think that you brought up a really interesting topic. I never knew the exact reason for why brain freezes happen so your blog was really informative. I liked how you pointed out that the study is not that reliable due to a small number of participants. I found this article, which also talks about the study that was conducted at Harvard Medical School. However, it discusses that brain freezes and migraines may be related. Researchers hypothesized that people who get migraines are more prone to brain freezes; the study at Harvard was done to test this hypothesis. Therefore, I think that it would be cool to look into this more although the researches mentioned that it is really hard to test since both migraines and brain freezes are unpredictable.

  2. Madeline Elizabeth Dittrich

    This was an interesting blog to read because I liked how you criticized the study. I see that you felt that the study wasn’t large enough in order to be considered reliable. I agree with this, because I think that the study needed to be conducted with a larger group of people. Here’s an article I found that more thoroughly explains why brain freezes happen: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130522095335.htm . It’s good to know why brain freezes occur, but I wish there was a way to stop them. Getting brain freezes while eating ice cream is often a very painful experience!

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