So I’m listening to a comic go on about “brain freeze,” and I don’t really get it, because I’ve never had an ice cream headache. It’s not for lack of eating ice cream. I love the stuff, plus frozen drinks, including virgin daiquiris being my drink of choice when I’m the designated driver (or pregnant). I also like fluffy, 500 calorie ice cream coffee drinks, and Popsicles, and various other kid-type “frozen confections.”
It’s also not for being resistant to headaches. My migraines are the stuff of legend. Eating cold things is just not a trigger.
Why is that? Anyone else never (literally NEVER) get them? is it something about the way we eat ice cream?
Speaking of migraines, I get awful, debilitating ones as well. Sometimes if I’m really caught in a cycle and my meds aren’t doing the trick, a big bowl of ice cream helps. I figure the brain freeze is helping to knock down the swelling from the inside. I’m not sure if it makes a difference, but ice packs don’t help at all with my migraines. Really, when they’re that bad, Imitrex is my go to.
*I also have a friend who’s never had deja-vu.
I suspect that an experiment could be put together to test this…but there are certain moral qualms…
(Although we should always remember with astonished respect the Doper who submitted himself to waterboarding…)
I think it is unlikely that you don’t have the same set of nerves in the pleura (?) surrounding your brain that most of the rest of us have. Have you ever had a solid knock on the head? Hitting the side of the head against the floor can produce the most astonishing pain. This is approximately the same deal: the inside lining of the skull is really rich in sensory nerves.
Anyway, rejoice! It’s like someone who’s never had a toothache or an ingrown toenail. Most of the rest of us have, but jolly nice for those who haven’t! We can only envy!
I too have never had an ice cream headache. I actually never get headaches either. When I’m tense I get a sore stomach. If I get bad news I lose my appetite in an instant, even mid-mouthful.
I imagine an ice cream headache is something like eating something cold when you’ve got an exposed nerve in your tooth - now that I can relate to.
Oh, edited to add, I wolf down ice cream pretty quick, so I don’t think it’s the way we eat it.
Pleura is around your lungs, meninges is the area around your brain (hence meningitis). But an ice cream headache from what I can tell is constriction of blood vessels in your mouth, referring pain up to the top of your head. Migraines some how play into it, but I’m not sure how.
I never get brain freeze. I do get horrible migraines. I don’t have a cite, but I read somewhere years ago that people who get migraines tend to not be as supseptible to brain freeze/ice cream headaches.
I usually have a tension headache, and have a history of intense migraines, though recently I’ve been experiencing auras instead. And I love eating/drinking anything ice-cold.
Not only have I never had one, it is something I’ve only read about and only in English. “Damn that’s too cold!” for a moment, yes… but “my head hurts cos I ate ice cream” is in the realm of what are you talking about.
I’m not sure if it’s something lost in translation in the descriptions, or as you say, it’s got to do with how we eat it. Perhaps it’s the difference between “eating” and “snorting”, or perhaps people are drawing correlations between two unrelated things. It could be your version of “don’t sleep in an air current”
I get it when I bite directly into something cold with my front teeth. It sends a chill bordering on pain through my whole head. It’s not quite like an actual headache - more like hitting a nerve.
Mine is similar, except it’s usually on the right side of my head, just above my ear. Fie seconds is about right, though. It’s not incapacitating, but it sure is freaking annoying.
Mine is similar, except it’s usually on the right side of my head, just above my ear. Fie seconds is about right, though. It’s not incapacitating, but it sure is freaking annoying.
