What causes an ice cream headache?

★ wanayoo — archive 1999 http://howstuffworks.com/question96.htm

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Each weekday Marshall Brain answers questions submitted by the readers of How Stuff Works in the Question of the Day section of HSW. You can also view previously answered questions in the HSW Question Archive. Here is today's question!

Question

What causes an "ice cream headache" - the headache you get when you eat something cold?

Answer

Most people have experienced the dreaded ice cream headache at some point. You are minding your own business on a hot summer day and you are eating something like an ice cream cone, a milk shake, a slurpee or a sno-cone. Then suddenly, out of the blue you are hit with the most excrutiating headache in the world! Fortunately they only last about 30 seconds - otherwise you would have to kill yourself!

So where do these horrible headaches come from??? I have not seen a better answer to the question than this article by Joseph Hulihan. It's a little technical, but it contains some great information.

Here's a summary: When something cold touches the roof of your mouth on a hot day, it triggers a cold headache. The cause is a dilation of blood vessels in the head. The dilation may be caused by a nerve center located above the roof of your mouth - when this nerve center gets cold, it seems to over-react and tries to heat your brain. Therefore, the easy way to avoid brain freeze would be to keep cold things away from the roof of your mouth!

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