What Causes Brain Freeze?

Interesting! I don't really experience "brain freeze", I get what I call "chest freeze" or "throat freeze". Same feeling, different place.

This sounds like India - If you offer someone coffee they may reply - 'No thanks, I just had cold'.

According to that myth you screw up your entire system by mixing hot and cold.

I never had any problem and often had a cup of coffee and a coke going at the same time. Most people recognize? No, I don't think so.

I have never heard of brain freeze or experienced such a thing - sounds like something made up by a doctor wanting to go on TV.

Russ

Brain freeze is triggered by cold stuff passing over a sensitive spot at the back of one's palate. The precise spot probably varies from person to person, but in my case it's a precise patch at the back left just before the airway dives down. Swallowing ice cream and what-not on the right-hand side has no effect; swallowing on the left-hand side makes me feel that an ice spike is being driven from my palate into my brain. DZ

brain freeze is also known as an "ice cream headache." Surfers know it well--particularly those who surf northern California waters which come straight down from Alaska. If you fall off your board, your whole body is inundated in 60-degree water and your head feels like it will explode. migraines are caused by the same general class of blood vessel behavior.

Hi, Bix. Ice-cream headache is brain freeze, all right, but I suspect that surf-dunk chillout isn't. I experienced two similar cases without getting cranial clench: a few times when I went from my university gym's sauna straight into the gym's small 5 F cold-pool; and once when I told myself "How bad can it possibly be taking a dunk on the north coast of Iceland since I've already done the fast cool-off in university?" In the first case, just a quick chill (I controlled entry); in the second, total paralysis of my chest muscles when I dunked waist to chest in one heave. The latter time, I couldn't breathe for 15-odd seconds while my friends were laughing at my courage (recklessness). No skull chill that time, either: just hard cramping where I'd dunked. I didn't dunk my head and neck because someone had warned me that doing so might clamp my carotids .. it may have saved my life. DZ

Ever been in a Russian sauna where you go back and forth from the sauna to the very cold pool?

What about the numerous polar bear clubs where they take a dip along with the ice in mid winter?

Can't say I have, Russ. But I did do the sauna / cold-pool run 2-3 times at a single visit, so I imagine that it's something like that. I was 26 back then and better able to do it than now. When I was 36, I once spent 15-20 minutes in cold ocean water (say 10 F) off Newfoundalnd when I did my survival training for offshore-platform work, but that was with a dry-type survival suit. Still was damn cold, especially past the wrists (I felt like my hands had been amputated because the mitts wouldn't fit tight .. a pain I'll never forget). Those were the good old days; now at 47 and over the past 3-4 years, I've had a couple of brushes with hypothermia, so I won't be cold-dunking again. Saunas are fine, though. Cheers! DZ

Sphenopalantine Ganglioneuralgia is the diagnosis....

Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth to speed the relief

Thanks Jaxy!

Now I have the answer concerning exactly what is going on every time I enjoy that post workout frozen banana protein shake! I just don't think it would taste the same if I heated it up. No risk of "cranial frostbite" so I'll continue to wince my way through those brain freezes.

"Sphenopalantine Ganglioneuralgia" indeed.

One gets a headache from eating ice cream by being accustomed to eating ice cream! Decrease such negative response by repeated stimulation, I say!