What happens during a brain freeze and is it harmful?
Q. What exactly happens when I eat something cold and get an ice-cream headache? Is it harmful in any way?
A. Ice-cream headache is a headache some people get when they consume a cold food or beverage quickly. It's also known as "brain freeze" or cold-stimulus headache. The pain usually hits the forehead or both temples. It typically lasts less than two minutes.
The cause is debated. The leading theory suggests it starts when a cold substance touches the roof of the mouth or the back of the throat. This causes small blood vessels in those areas to first tighten and then rapidly open back up.
Pain receptors near the blood vessels sense the discomfort. They send a message along tiny nerve fibers to the trigeminal nerve in the head. The message then moves on to the brain. The brain reads the cold-stimulus sensations as coming from the head rather than the mouth. This type of pain is called referred pain.
Cold-stimulus pain is common. It happens in 30% to 40% of people who don't usually have headaches. The symptoms are harmless and not a sign of any underlying disease. It seems to be more common in migraine sufferers.
Because ice-cream headaches are so short-lived, they're hard to study. There's no proven way to stop them. Most people have their own ways to treat them. The most common is to curl the tongue and press the underside against the roof of the mouth.
The best way to prevent the headache is to eat very cold foods slowly.
Image: © Svetlana Repnitskaya/Getty Images
About the Author
Howard E. LeWine, MD, Chief Medical Editor, Harvard Health Publishing; Editorial Advisory Board Member, Harvard Health Publishing
Disclaimer:
As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content. Please note the date of last review or update on all articles.
No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
