I was stunned by Cecil’s Ice Cream Headache Column. It’s hard to believe that 2/3 of all people do not get them. I can’t remember anyone ever saying “I don’t get those” when they’ve come up in conversation.
I certainly get them. Can anyone step forward and say, “I don’t get those?”
I get them easily but my boyfriend has never experienced them and he has tried, it hurt watching him. be interesting to know why some people do and some don’t. bone or cartilage density(he is pretty thick headed) perhaps nerve endings aren’t so close to the roof of mouth?
So is that what a migraine feels like? For hours? I cannot imagine the horror.
Sometimes my teeth get hurty when I eat ice cream. I don’t think I’ve ever had the ice cream headache.
Granted, I’m not really into ice cream, so I only eat it sparingly. That could have more to do with it.
That post could have been written by me. I associate ice cream with tooth pain, but I’ve never had an “ice-cream headache”. Maybe those of us with sensitive teeth eat ice cream more carefully, and take smaller bites, and so avoid the headache?
Oh yeah, I get a brainfreeze from ice cream. Also from Slushies, Starbucks Frappacinos, etc. I’ve found the fastest and best way to get rid of them is to put your tongue on the roof of your mouth, on the palate. You’ll feel it’s very cold. Keep your tongue there for a moment until it warms and the brainfreeze will miraculously disappear.
I do not get brainfreezes or ice cream headaches. I tend to chew cold desserts, so that might help.
I have never gotten an ice cream headache, either.
I’ve never had an ice cream headache, and neither has my husband. One of my sons gets them so bad it almost hurts me to watch him; the other never does. We’re not sure how the one poor kid ended up with the mutant ice-cream-headache gene.
When I was a kid, I’d get them often. Now, only rarely. Maybe I just eat the stuff slower.
My mother and older brother got migraines. I started getting ocular migraines as an adult when my job got extremely stressful. I am sensitive to nitrites. More than 1-2 strips of bacon and I get a headache that lasts for 2-3 days.
For me, it feels like someone has jammed an icepick into my eyeball.
I am the same way - I get brainfreezes from anything cold and icy. I haven’t tried this trick yet but next time I will. I’m sure it will happen sometime soon though!
I get them, and I have to dispute Cecil’s answer. My hypothesis: An ice cream headache is a spasm or cramp of the Lower Esophageal Sphincter (the ring of muscle at the bottom of your esophagus just before your stomach) caused by the cold food going by, and then possibly some of the cold food getting stuck behind the spasm. To test this hypothesis, get an ice cream headache, and then drink some warm tap water. You will feel the water hit the Lower Esophageal Sphincter, and you will have instant relief.
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Well, that’s great and all, but can you explain why a LES cramp would cause pain behind the eyeballs?
Seems to me a more likely explanation for the relief you get–and I agree, your technique works–would be the passage of warm water across the palate.
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I never get them, but I do get migraines. My dad, who doesn’t get migraines, does get ice cream headaches. How interesting.
I always get them when i get carried away drinking a purple slurpe!
I don’t know anyone IRL that doesn’t get them.
My wife and her brother do not get them. In fact she never even heard of them until one night when we were still dating and I got one. She thought I was crazy that this was a common occurrence. I was dumbfounded that she never heard of them.
Jim
Well, that’s a lot of evidence (anecdotal, but that’s what I was looking for - anecdotal is so satisfying) that some people never get them.
My migraines weren’t as sharp, but to make up for being slightly duller, they added in sensitivity to light, sound, and smells, and a good jolt of nausea. On the up side, I knew that when I threw up, it was half over. And people concede that you may be sick when you throw up in ways that they don’t when you just say it hurts.
Still getting my mind around people not being suseptable to brain freezes. But there it is.
I know that wikipedia’s value is questionable at best, but while reading the page onpain I found this quote:
" The popularized term “brain freeze” is another example of referred pain, in which the vagus nerve is cooled by cold inside the throat."
Further wiki investigation gleans nothing more, as their own page on “brain freeze” never refers to the vagus nerve at all, rather indicating that the hard palate is the culprit. I also realize that this has nothing to do with a LES cramp, I merely post the quote as a curiosity found in unrelated research, and an indication that there is a “throat related” hypothesis out there somwhere.
This has been the first time I’ve heard of such a thing. I never have had them, now know anybody who does. Mom has migraines but ice cream does definitely not trigger them.