How to Prevent Ice Cream Headache or Brain Freeze

Ice-cream-headache, or brain-freeze, is something that any ice cream lover has likely experienced at one time or another. In our eagerness to enjoy, we tend to rush into it, thus inducing the painful phenomenon we've come to wish we didn't know.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Patience
• More patience!

1. Causes of ice-cream-headache:
   Ice-cream-headache happens when cold comes into direct contact with the roof of the mouth. Pain is actually caused by the quick warming of the hard palate; the hard, bony partition between the nasal passages and the mouth; and not by the cold itself.
2. The mechanisms:
   The body's response to the cold is to constrict the nearby blood vessels, and that forces the blood to flow more slowly, which helps to reduce heat loss. During an ice-cream-headache, the body does as it is designed to do. However, after the blood vessels have constricted and returned to normal size, the nerves in the area sense that response as pain, and they send that message to the trigeminal ganglia; a segment of sensory tissue in the temporal area of the skull; which translates into pain; which is then referred to the forehead and behind the eyes.
3. The prognosis:
   Usually, ice-cream-headache does not last very long; perhaps up to several minutes; except in extreme cases or in ultra-sensitive individuals.
4. Suggestions for solutions:
   It has been suggested that allowing the mouth to return to normal temperature more slowly; that is, eating cold items very slowly, thus allowing for easier and slower temperature fluctuations of the hard palate; can prevent ice-cream-headache from taking place.
   
   Some say that placing the tongue against the roof of the mouth may help relieve ice-cream-headache.
   
   Cupping the hands around the mouth and nose and breathing in and out a few times is also believed to help reduce Ice Cream Headache. And, sipping room temperature water may be another help.
5. The prevention of ice-cream-headache:
   
   Probably the best way to prevent ice-cream-headache is to be fully aware that it is almost always associated with the speed that cold items are consumed. Armed with this invaluable knowledge you will know how to completely avoid the dreaded brain-freeze!

Tips & Warnings

• Eat cold foods very slowly
• Pause between bites of cold foods
• Exercise patience (and discipline); eat slowly!
• Caution: Rapid eating of cold foods may cause ice-cream-headache or brain-freeze!