Why does ice cream hurt??

Alright You know that feeling when you are eating ice cream or drinking a Slurpee and your brain suddenly feels like it's going to explode and you want to die... or maybe you at least know some one that has experienced it well that is a brain freeze! although some people experience back freezes instead

The scientific name for it is:

sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia (meaning "nerve pain of the sphenopalatine ganglion"),

Brain freezes occur when you are eating ice cream or something really cold and it goes against the roof of your mouth before you swallow it. There is a nerve ending located in the center of your palate(roof of your mouth) called the sphenopalatine nerve when that rapidly gets cooled it sends a signal to your brain that tries to over compensate to cool the brain and therefore causing a dilation of blood vessels in the head.

Basically your brain quickly tries to cool itself down and cause that pain.

They are much more common when the weather is warm than when it's cold because of the sudden change in temperature.

One third of all people are statistically susceptible to brain freezes

And an estimated 30 percent of the population experiences Brain Freeze sometime in their life

although i think these numbers are probably higher since i know a lot of people that experience them.

Here are some suggestions on how to relieve a brain freeze:

1. The quickest way is to take a drink of warm water and hold it against the roof of your mouth.

2. The next best thing to do is press your tongue against the roof of your mouth to rewarm the nerve

3. Rub the Back of Your neck (i don't think that one would really work)

4. Use Your Warm Breath: cup your hand over your mouth and nose. Then, breathe in and out quickly through your mouth. Your warm breathe will help warm the nerves above the roof of your mouth.

Some people like my sister experience a back freeze. I researched it a lot and even asked cha cha and didn't really get any reliable information. The only thing that i can think is that the blood stream would also have a quick change in temperature and there for as it runs down your back "freezes" it. Or that the same experience that you get when you drink something really hot and you can feel it as it goes down your esophagus and stuff you can feel that. Sorry Sera there is just not much info on back freezes yet!

This website has a good explanation of brain freezes:

http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/ice_cream_headache.html

And here are some other sources that have info if you want to learn more:

http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/brainfreeze.htm

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/963442/how_to_stop_painful_brain_freeze_when.html?cat=5