Licking the Ice-Cream Headache

Kate · Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 6:44 am Post subject: Licking the Ice-Cream Headache

What causes 'brain freeze,' and how to prevent it
By Anne Harding
Special to MSN

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You might expect something unpleasant like tension or hunger to be the most common cause of head pain. In fact, it's something most people are quite fond of: ice cream.

One in three people get "brain freeze," known more formally in the medical community as "ice-cream headache." It occurs when any very cold food or drink hits the back of the palate, leading to a stabbing headache usually felt in the front of the head. Pain peaks 30 to 60 seconds after ingesting the cold substance, and eases in 10 to 20 seconds. In a few unfortunate people, the pain can persist for up to five minutes.

It's an old wives' tale that ice-cream headache happens only in the summer. People are more likely to eat chilly treats in the hotter months, but brain freeze is just as likely to happen when it's cold out.

Here's the scoop
There are two requirements for an ice-cream headache, notes Dr. Macit Selekler, a neurologist at the Kocaeli University Faculty of Medicine in Kocaeli, Turkey, who has studied several types of headache, including brain freeze. The substance ingested must be cold, and it must come into contact with a large enough surface area on the palate to trigger a reaction.

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The cold substance stimulates the same nerves involved in a migraine, explains Dr. Stephen Silberstein, a professor of neurology and director of the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. In fact, he says, people who suffer migraines are also more likely to get ice-cream headaches. "The migraine brain is more sensitive to all kinds of stimuli, and therefore the patient with migraine reacts with increased sensitivity to cold stimuli."

Painful constriction of the blood vessels in the area exposed to cold has also been suggested as a cause of ice-cream headache, Selekler notes. "I think these views are complimentary to each other; both hyper-irritability of the trigeminal system and instability of the vascular system cause both migraine headaches and ice-cream headache."

While Silberstein says a brain freeze won't trigger a migraine, some researchers suggest it can; Selekler thinks this might be a possibility. "During my study in which ice-cream headache was triggered by holding ice in the mouth, a few patients complained about the migraine attack that developed within a few hours. This could be incidental. However, every painful stimulus that arises from the trigeminal nerve area, in the face and in the neck, could trigger migraine or non-specific headache."

The fix
Home remedies for ice-cream headache abound. Since 1997, when the British Medical Journal published an editorial on ice-cream headache, dozens of people have posted their own observations on the malady and how to stop it. The suggestions included putting a cold object on the inside of the wrist, swallowing a pinch of salt, moving your head lower than the heart, and even forcing a burp. One sea kayaker described a "brain freeze" induced by capsizing in cold water, while another sufferer reported an ice-cream backache.

But the best remedy is quite simple, Silberstein says. "Let the ice cream melt a little bit or have some warm water to drink and that will turn the problem off." Prevention is also common sense, he adds. "Just don't put a bunch of ice cream in your mouth."

Slow going
In 2002, BMJ published the results of an experiment by Hamilton, Ontario, eighth-grader Maya Kaczorowski and her father Janusz, in which they investigated whether accelerated ice-cream eating produced more headaches than a "cautious" approach. Maya gave roughly two scoops of vanilla ice cream to each of 145 middle-school students. Half were told to eat the ice cream in less than five seconds and half were told to eat it slowly so that some was still left 30 seconds later. The daughter-father team found 27 percent of the fast eaters reported ice-cream headaches, compared with 13 percent of the slower eaters.

Most medical experts agree with the Kaczorowskis' findings. "To prevent ice-cream headache, people should avoid ingesting cold liquids or cold foods in large amounts and fast," says Selekler. "Large amounts create a large contact area, and fast ingestion causes repetitive cold stimulation in the palate and in the pharynx."

Taking a moment to let your cold drink or dessert warm up will actually make it a more pleasant experience all around, says Silberstein. "You get more flavor, and no ice-cream headache."

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Anne Harding is a health writer living in Maplewood, N.J.
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A closed mouth gathers no feet.