What causes brain freeze?

Question

I'm drinking a starbucks pomegranate frozen tea thing and I keep getting brain freeze! What causes it??

Answer 1

The terms brain freeze and ice cream headache refer to the same painful headache many people get when quickly eating something cold. The pain is caused by the rapid cooling of the roof of the mouth, which is close to the sphenopalatine nerve, a section of an extensive bundle of nerves running from the face up into the brain.

When this nerve gets cold, it fires off a danger signal that the entire head is about to become chilled and warns the vascular system to start pumping more blood to the brain to keep it warm. Vessels open up and the sudden in-rush of warm blood causes a painful sensation, which lasts anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. By that time the body has rewarmed the sphenopalantine nerve and the blood flow to the brain reduces to normal levels, stopping the pain.

The source of the pain has been described as being similar to that resulting from sticking hands chilled in winter into a bucket of warm water. The sudden increase in blood flow and associated expansion causes pain.

One third of all people are statistically susceptible to brain freezes. They are more often caused by eating ice cream than drinking an iced beverage because ice cream is colder than ice. Also, they are much more common when the weather is warm than when it's cold, suggesting that it's the rate or amount of temperature change that's important.

Brain freezes are called "referred pain" because the pain occurs in a location (the brain) that's different than the location of the stimulus (the roof of the mouth.)

The quickest way to relieve a brain freeze it to take a drink of warm water and hold it against the roof of your mouth. Since they are over so quickly anyway and it's unlikely that you're going to be holding a cup of hot water in one hand at the same time that you are holding an ice cream cone in the other, the next best thing to do is press your tongue against the roof of your mouth to rewarm the nerve.

Prevention is simple: eat and drink very cold foods slowly.

Answer 2

Cold causes blood vessels to contract, or shrink and this impairs blood flow. When you eat or drink something extremely cold, this chills the blood vessels in the roof of your mouth in the hard and mostly in the soft palate. (Feel the top of your mouth with your tongue or a finger and you can feel the change from the hard part to the softer part.)

These blood vessels communicate with those in the rest of your head and brain, and the narrowing causes the "brain freeze" headache.

Now, here's the good news. You can stop or greatly reduce that unpleasant feeling just by warming your palate up a little bit. Curl your tongue backward to touch the roof of the mouth and leave it there for a minute or two. This warms up those poor chilly blood vessels and the headache usually goes away like magic. It's a nice trick to know, and of course you can drink more slowly or even take sips of a warm drink to do the same thing, but you always have a tongue handy to use as a warmer.

Answer 3

Cold Drinks Lol

Answer 4

The cold thing is touching the roof of your mouth. I mean, brain freeze doesn't occur when cold stuff touch anything else.

Answer 5

drinking/eating cold things like ice cream, and that thing ur drinking, too fast causes brain freeze, so stop drinking it so fast

Answer 6

it's d ice which freezes d nerves sending d impuls to d brain.so when u drink ice ur vessels n nerves shrink,make it harder for d impuls 2 travel so ur brain shrinks fr lack or improper msg transfer.

Answer 7

A super size strawberry milk shake

Answer 8

when ur brain is frozen lol
when u eat something extremely cold too quick.
and u see water comin down ur eyes and nose u feel that cold breeze my god i can just feel it now that junk burns ur nose.

Answer 9

you drink tooo much at one time.... :) next time you drink it try lil' less at one time. It's like drinking an ICEE. My cousin and I used to chug it and see who could take it the longest without giving up...but DAMN.... IT HURTS

Answer 10

when you drink a big intake of something really cold ie''' icecream or slush really quickly i think