DO YOU ever get a headache after drinking really cold water or eating an ice cream? That headache is called a “brain freeze”. Brain freeze is really a type of headache that is rapid in onset, but rapidly resolved as well. Our mouths are highly vascularized, including the tongue, that’s why we take our temperature there. But drinking a cold drink fast doesn’t give the mouth the time to absorb the cold very well.
According to neuroscientists, the brain freeze happens, when you slurp a really cold drink or eat ice cream too fast you are rapidly changing the temperature in the back of the throat at the juncture of the internal carotid artery, which feeds blood to the brain and the anterior cerebral artery, which is where brain tissue starts. One thing that the brain does not like is for things to change and the brain freeze is a mechanism to prevent you from doing that. So, next time be gentle on the cold water and ice cream intake.
