Only a third of people experience brain freeze from eating something cold, though most people are susceptible to a related headache from sudden exposure to a very cold climate. Brain freeze typically hits about 10 seconds after chilling your palate and lasts about half a minute. This is called 'referred pain' since the cause of the pain is in a different location from where you feel it. What is brain freeze Brain freeze, or to call it by its scientific name 'sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia' (try saying that with a mouthful of ice cream), is the intense pain you feel in your head soon after eating or drinking something cold, like an ice lolly, an ice cream, or a slushy drink. Everybody pretty much freezes when they’re publicly called out or criticized, or attention is. Because the trigeminal nerve also senses facial pain, the brain interprets the pain signal as coming from the forehead. Your response might include verbal tap-dancing or nonverbal noises. The dilation of the blood vessels triggers pain receptors, which release pain-causing prostaglandins, increase sensitivity to further pain, and produce inflammation while sending signals through the trigeminal nerve to alert the brain to the problem. This is an attempt to direct blood to the area and warm it back up. Brain freeze is also known as ice cream headache, cold stimulus headache, and sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. When something cold touches the roof of your mouth (your palate), the sudden temperature change of the tissue stimulates nerves to cause rapid dilation and swelling of blood vessels.
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