This happens when you eat or drink something extremely cold quickly (Representative Image: Shutterstock)
A brain freeze is a short intense pain in the head’s front part
Summers call for ice creams, cold drinks, slushies, popsicles or maybe just a bottle of water with lots of ice cubes. But while consuming them, you might have experienced a sharp pain in your head. If not as an adult, then maybe as a child because you didn’t know the consequence of eating ice creams too fast. A brain freeze is a short intense pain in the head’s front part.
This happens when you eat or drink something extremely cold quickly. While anyone can experience it, people with migraines and kids are more prone to having a brain freeze, stated a report by Cleveland Clinic. The reason for brain freeze is the expansion of blood vessels in your brain that happens when you eat something very, very cold very fast and your mouth and throat begin adjusting the temperature, sending signals to the brain to widen the blood vessels to allow more blood to reach the target for warmth.
The change in the size of blood vessels causes that sharp pain. Brain freeze is very different from other headaches. It lasts only last for a few seconds or a maximum of two minutes. It doesn’t require medicine either. To make a brain freeze go away as quickly as possible, try and bring back the temperature of your mouth to room temperature.
Here’s how you can achieve that
- Press your tongue or thumb against your mouth’s roof to transfer heat to the brain.
- Stop eating or drinking the cold item for a while and let your mouth and throat come back to room temperature.
- Drink warm fluids to help raise the temperature of your mouth quickly.
Brain freeze is not a serious condition, but sudden discomfort can be very irritating to people. Wearing scarfs in extremely cold weather and covering your neck properly, eating or drinking extremely cold things slowly and avoiding freezing food and drinks are some of the ways of preventing a brain freeze.
