Why do you get brain freeze when you drink somthing cold?!
Answers: Why do you get brain freeze whenever you drink something to cold to quickly.
Answer: You’ve been craving an ice cream all day and finally you have one. You eagerly take a big bite and close your eyes, ready to savor that cool, sweet taste. Within seconds you feel a sudden, strong pain in the middle of your head. You forget about ice cream because now you have what feels like a really bad headache. Luckily, the pain goes away in less than a minute. You very carefully take a second mouthful of ice cream, thinking to yourself, “what was that?”
You just experienced what is commonly called “brain freeze.” Other names are “ice cream headache,” and “cold induced headache.” This can occur when you quickly eat or drink something cold. However, your brain does not actually freeze. In the roof of your mouth there are lots of very sensitive nerves that protect your brain. When these nerves feel something cold like ice cream or a frozen drink, they think the brain is too cold and automatically send messages to the brain telling it to “warm up.” In order to get warm, blood vessels in the brain dilate, or swell. This causes the painful sensation that lasts about 30 to 50 seconds.
About a third of the population experiences this type of pain at one time or another. People who get migraine and tension headaches may be more likely to feel pain after eating or drinking something cold. There are some things you can do to prevent the pain. As yummy as that ice cream or Slurpee may be, take your time between bites and sips. If you do feel pain, warm up your mouth by sipping something warm or touching the roof of your mouth with your tongue.
I think in back of the mouth on the roof.
A nerve gets frozen and it does that?
Nerves in the roof of your mouth and the back of your throat get shocked and send automatic reactions(brain freeze) to your brain telling you to slow down. My ice cream is half melted by the time I finish.
The reaction is (obviously) triggered by the cold ice cream or beverage; coming into contact with the roof of the mouth. It triggers nerves that give the brain the impression of a very cold environment. To heat up the brain again, blood vessels start to swell, which causes the headache-like pain for approximately 30 seconds.
The temperature change in the roof of the mouth has to be rather drastic; this is why brain freeze often occurs on warm days.
The pain can be relieved by putting the tongue to the roof of the mouth, which logically will heat it up.
Brain freeze, cold headache, ice cream headache, shakeache, frigid face, freezie, Frozen Brain Syndrome, cold-stimulus headache, or its given scientific name sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia are terms used to describe a form of cranial pain or headache which people are known to sometimes experience after consuming cold beverages or foods such as ice cream, slurpees, or margaritas, particularly when consumed quickly.
The reaction is usually triggered within a few seconds after a very cold consumed substance comes into contact with the roof of the mouth. The pain is not caused by the cold temperature alone, but rather, quick warming of the hard palate. Letting the mouth slowly return to normal temperature can prevent this from occurring. Brain freeze is often a result of speaking or breathing out of the mouth after consuming something cold. The body's response to cold environments is to vasoconstrict the peripheral vasculature (to reduce the diameter of blood vessels). This vasoconstriction takes place to reduce blood flow to the area and thus minimize the body's heat loss. After vasoconstriction, the vessels return to their normal state, resulting in massive dilation (vasodilation) of the arteries that supply the palate (descending palatine arteries). The nerves in the region of the palate (greater and lesser palatine nerves) sense this as pain and transmit that sensation back to the trigeminal ganglia. This results in pain that is referred to the forehead and below the orbit, and other regions from which the trigeminal nerve receives sensation. (This phenomenon is similar to the pain that is present in the left arm when someone is having a myocardial infarction or heart attack). A similar effect occurs when one takes a prescription vasodilator, such as Nitroglycerin or Viagra. It is a stabbing or aching type of pain that usually recedes within 10–20 seconds after its onset, but sometimes may last 30–60 seconds; in rare cases it can persist for up to five minutes. The pain is usually located in the midfrontal area, but can be unilateral in the temporal, frontal, or retro-orbital regions.[citation needed]
It has been reported that the pain can be relieved by moving the tongue to the roof of the mouth,[1] which will cause greater warmth in the region; it is also believed that the pain can be relieved by slowly sipping room temperature water. Laying the head to the side may also provide relief. Creating a mask with one's hands placed over the mouth and nose while breathing rapidly is also said to be useful since the temperature in the mouth rises quickly. A report was submitted to the British Medical Journal on brain freeze; it focused on the effect of speed of consumption of ice cream on causing brain freeze. Commonly referred to as "ice cream headaches," it has been studied as an example of referred pain,[2] an unpleasant sensation localized to an area separate from the site of the painful stimulation.
It has been estimated that "30% of the population" experiences brain freeze or freeze head from ice cream.[3] Some studies suggest that brain freeze is more common in people who experience migraines. Raskin and Knittle found this to be the case, with brain freeze occurring in 93% of migraine sufferers and in only 31% of controls. However, other studies found that it is more common in people without migraines.[citation needed] These inconsistencies may be due to differences in subject selection: the subjects of the first study were drawn from a hospital population, whereas the controls in the second were student volunteers, making the tests inconclusive.