Brain freeze
Also called: Cold-stimulus headache · Ice cream headache · Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia
A short, sharp headache in the forehead a few seconds after cold food or drink touches the roof of the mouth. It usually passes in under a minute.
How common
Does this happen to you?
How it works
Cold food touches the palate, the roof of the mouth. The blood vessels there cool very fast. Pain sensors in the palate sense the sudden change in the blood vessels1. Their signal travels along the trigeminal nerve, the main sensory nerve of the face13. That nerve also carries pain from the forehead. The brain cannot tell which branch fired, so it places the pain in the forehead. This is referred pain1.
One theory adds a second step. The artery at the front of the brain widens quickly to bring warm blood to the area. The sudden change in pressure inside the skull is felt as pain1. When the artery narrows again, the pain stops.
The pain starts a few seconds after the cold hits and usually ends within a minute46. Surveys find that between 40% and 51% of people get it45. Some studies find it more common in people who get migraines5. Others find no difference, or the reverse14.
Try it
If you get migraines, skip this test.
- Take a large spoon of ice cream or a big gulp of a cold slush drink.
- Hold it against the roof of your mouth for a few seconds instead of swallowing.
- Wait. The headache arrives within seconds, sits in the forehead, and fades fast.
- To end it sooner, press your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, or sip something warm.
Is it a problem?
No. Doctors class brain freeze as a primary headache, which means it is not a sign of another illness6. It usually lasts less than 30 seconds, and rarely more than a few minutes14. It is not a small stroke and not a migraine, though people who get migraines may feel it more strongly4. There is nothing to treat, since it clears on its own.
See a doctor if head pain:
- comes with other neurological symptoms,
- lasts more than a few minutes after a cold trigger,
- sits on one side and keeps coming back without cold.
These signs point to a different cause.
History and culture
A popular medical-sounding name, sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, just means “pain from the sphenopalatine nerve cluster”2. The International Classification of Headache Disorders lists brain freeze as “headache attributed to ingestion or inhalation of a cold stimulus”6.
Sources and further material
- Wikipedia Cold-stimulus headache
- Wikipedia Sphenopalatine ganglion A nerve cluster behind the nasal cavity. It helps control blood flow in the nose.
- PubMed Prevalence and characteristics of headache attributed to ingestion or inhalation of a cold stimulus (HICS): A cross-sectional study Survey of 618 adults in Cephalalgia. 51.3% get brain freeze. Migraine does not raise the risk, but it makes the pain stronger.
- PubMed Ice-cream headache--a large survey of 8359 adolescents Survey of 8,359 teenagers in Taiwan, in Cephalalgia. 40.6% get brain freeze. It is more common in those with migraine.
- ichd-3.org 4.5.2 Headache attributed to ingestion or inhalation of a cold stimulus (ICHD-3) The official definition. Onset is immediate. Pain resolves within 10 minutes. Common, especially in people with migraine.
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Related oddities
Referred pain
Pain from an internal organ often shows up somewhere else, like the left arm during a heart attack or the shoulder blade from a gallbladder. The nerves from the organ and from that patch of skin share a line into the spinal cord.
Migraine aura
A shimmering zigzag or C-shaped patch of light that grows across your vision over 5 to 60 minutes and then fades. It can come before a migraine headache or, in some people, with no headache at all.
Pins and needles
The prickling, buzzing feeling in a limb after you sit on it or lean on it. It happens when blood returns to a squeezed nerve and its sensory fibres briefly fire on their own.