Why Does Ice Cream Give Us Brain Freeze?

Amid the sweltering heat of summer, few things hit the spot like ice cream. But as pleasant as a heaping helping of rocky road or cookie dough may be, enjoying this frozen treat isn’t without its potentially painful perils. You might find yourself the unfortunate victim of brain freeze — even if it’s hot as heck outside, there’s such a thing as too cold apparently.

“Brain freeze” is an apt name for the phenomenon, not only because it’s caused by eating something frozen, but also because the sensation — while (hopefully) brief — can be strong enough to stop you in your tracks. Everything is frozen, or on hold, until it passes. 

Ice cream isn’t out to hurt you, though, and neither is your biology. Despite the momentary pain, brain freeze is actually caused by your body trying to protect you.

You Scream for Ice Cream

In the medical community, brain freeze is known as sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia (which might also freeze your brain as you try to say that out loud). In layman’s terms, it’s a brief yet extreme headache that forms in the front of the head. It stems from a survival reflex aiming to regulate your body’s core temperature, causing discomfort in the process.

The leading theory is that brain freeze is triggered when something extremely cold (food, drink, or even air) comes into contact with your upper palate, or the roof of your mouth. When this happens, blood vessels rapidly contract to conserve temperature, just as you would wrap your arms around yourself and huddle in a bitter wind. But your vessels  then expand just as quickly to help increase blood flow and restore warmth. 

Together, this sudden contraction and rush of blood send pain signals to the brain through your trigeminal nerve, part of which is located around the middle of the face and forehead — which is why brain freeze is often felt in that area.

In the medical community, ailments such as brain freeze are known as “referred pain,” which is essentially when you suffer an injury or experience stimulation in one part of the body but feel pain elsewhere. It’s sort of like a city subway system — if a train breaks down in one part of the city, it can back everything up and cause delays miles away.

While brain freeze may feel agonizing, it’s fortunately quite brief, as 98% of brain freezes disappear in less than five minutes, with many lasting just a few seconds. But if you can’t stand the torment, the Cleveland Clinic suggests drinking something warm or room temperature to restore warmth in the mouth, or pressing your thumb against the roof of your mouth to transfer heat from your hand to your palate.

Interestingly, children may experience brain freeze more commonly due to having smaller palates that cool more quickly from ice cream, as well as having less mature nerve stability. There’s also the fact that kids tend to chomp into their ice cream cones with bites as big as they can muster, further increasing the temperature differential within their mouths.

With each brain freeze, over time a child will ideally adapt and learn to slow down as they enjoy their ice cream. Just as we learn to avoid pain after touching a hot stove, we also figure out how to properly eat cold dessert — though even grown-ups can sometimes forget and overzealously sink their teeth into an ice cream cone.