What Causes Ice Cream Headaches?

While many theories on what exactly causes ice cream headaches or “brain freezes” have existed for some time, it has only been very recently that it was discovered exactly what is going on here.  It turns out, ice cream headaches are a result of a rapid change in the size of blood vessels as a response to an extreme shift in temperature in the roof of the mouth, particularly the back of the roof of the mouth.

Specifically, what is happening here is that when you stick something extremely cold in your mouth and eat it quickly, such as drinking an ice cold beverage or eating ice cream rapidly, it rapidly cools the palate of your mouth.  Why this is significant is that there is a nerve center located just above the back of the roof of your mouth.  This nerve center includes nerve clusters that send signals to the brain about changes in body temperature.  When these nerve clusters are rapidly cooled by what you are consuming, they are over stimulated and send the message to the brain that the body just lost a severe amount of heat.  This ends up resulting in the rapid contraction of blood vessels in your head.

Shortly thereafter, the temperature at the palate of your mouth goes back to normal and the nerve centers signal everything is fine and the blood vessels end up rapidly dilating.  This all can happen in a matter of a few seconds, but the end result of this rapid contraction and dilation of blood vessels is an extreme, sharp pain, often in your temples, forehead, or sometimes even in your face itself.

This ends up creating a very similar pulsing sensation that many people experience when they get true migraine headaches.  Migraine headaches can even be induced by cold temperatures in some people, leading some researches to believe there is a close connection between what is happening during certain types of migraine headaches and what is happening during an ice-cream headache.