Dear Doc:
I visit my mother in the nursing home each week and we have made it a tradition to eat ice cream and play cards together. At times, when I eat something cold, I get “brain freeze”? What causes that feeling and how do I prevent it?

Dear Reader:
Your brain may freeze when you try to answer that obvious “Wheel of Fortune” puzzle and you can’t quite get that four word, no more vowels, phrase from the-tip-of-your-tongue. Your brain may also freeze up when you have to give a report in public or when your waitress asks how your meal was and you don’t want to offend her because the meal was just awful! So, you may freeze for a minute and then find yourself regretfully saying, “It was okay.” But I think the “brain freeze” you are talking about is also referred to as an “ice cream headache” or in medical lingo (yes, there is an official medical term for it) “sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.” This discomfort can occur after consuming a cold beverage or cold foods such as ice cream.

Almost everyone has had this sensation. In fact the term “ice cream headache” can be found in journals as far back as 1937. The first published use of the now more popular and descriptive “brain freeze” term was in 1991. Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia literally means pain of the sphenopalatine nerve bundle.

Brain freeze occurs after quickly eating or drinking very cold substances. When a cold food or beverage touches the roof of the mouth, the blood vessels in that area constrict and shrink. Your body reacts very quickly by dilating (expanding) other blood vessels in an attempt to get warm blood to that area and heat it up. A similar but painless blood vessel response causes your face to be flush after being outside on a cold day. In both instances, blood vessels over-compensate in their expansion as they attempt to rewarm an area of the body. In the case of consuming something cold, pain receptors in the roof of your mouth become activated with this blood vessel activity. The activated nerve impulses warn the brain you have something bad going on in the roof of your mouth. The result is an intense, piercing pain in your forehead or “brain freeze.”

Don’t worry; you don’t have to give up your weekly mint chocolate chip just yet. The most effective way to prevent “brain freeze” is to eat your ice cream more slowly. This will prevent the roof of your mouth from experiencing sudden variation in temperature and triggering the blood vessel response that causes the freeze. Also, keeping the ice cream in your mouth longer will allow your palate (roof of your mouth) to become use to the temperature and prevent a freeze.

If these preventive tactics fail and you get a brain freeze, you have things you can do to decrease the intensity and duration of the freeze. The goal of these maneuvers is to warm your palate and let your brain know everything is okay and that the roof of your mouth is not under attack! You can relieve brain freeze by firmly pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth. The underside of your tongue will warm your palate stopping the blood vessel response. Similarly you can press your thumb to the roof of your mouth warming the palate and ending the brain freeze. Other tactics include, drinking a slightly warm beverage or cupping your hand over your nose and mouth as you breathe. Both of which will raise the temperature in your mouth ending the crisis caused by too cold a palate.

May you and your mom continue to enjoy your weekly ice cream and may your card games be challenging and rewarding as well.

Stay healthy, and remember the quote by Douglas Horton, “The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.”
Dr. Nagpaul is a medical doctor and is board certified in Internal Medicine. He currently is the Medical Director at Newark-Wayne Community Hospital, DeMay Living Center and Wayne County Public Health. This column is meant to be educational and not intended to be used to make individual treatment decisions. Prior to starting or stopping any treatment, please confer with your own health care provider. To send questions to our medical providers, please email Dr. Nagpaul at Arun.Nagpaul@rochesterregional.org and put “Ask a Doc” in the subject line.