Ice cream headache

Greetings. Enjoyed the article, but in my study of vocal pedagogy
(including the adverse effects on the singing mechanism of extremely hot
or cold liquids), I've read that the sensation is actually the result of a
chilled optic nerve, which is vulnerable to extreme temperatures in that
it lies very close beneath the skin.

In any case, I happened upon my own cure several years ago, which is,
upon first "spike" of pain, to quickly lean forward at the waist, until
your head is below the plane of your heart. The sudden rush of blood to
the neck and head seems to create a surge in temperature sufficient to
quickly (within just a few seconds, really) overcome the effects of the
cold. At least, that has been my experience, and it has never failed.

Best Regards.
Aaron Dalton
Salt Lake City, UT
USA

Competing interests:
None declared

I get brain freezes fairly often, but the quickest
way to get rid of the pain is easy. I haven't tried
placing my hand on my throat, so i can't say that
doesn't work. I have put my palm on my head, as if
to hold the pain back, but that has never seemed to
help it. I have heard, tried, and found putting your
toungue on the top of your mouth is the best way to
make the ice cream headache go away. It takes about
3 seconds to work because it has to heat up the top
of your mouth, but it works. It makes perfect sense
too. When the cold object passes across your soft palate,
that is when you get a brain freeze. Well your mouth
is about 98 degrees so why not use it. If you put
your toungue on the top of your mouth, it equalizes
the temperature, and then warms it up again. It's
worked for me anyway

Competing interests:
None declared

Don't ask me how I discovered the icecream headache cure. I just know
I did. But it works for me and it works for my husband and kids after I
introduced them to the trick. On any given day, forcing a burp is
impossible.

Try it right now.

People can't burp on cue unless you've just gobbled up some air first
or had a sip of your favorite cola, etc.

But at the immediate onset of an icecream headache, if you force a
burp, (and there is always one there to force at the onset of one of these
things,) you relieve some sort of temporal pressure build-up, and it is
gone.

Works every single time, and you don't have to avoid cold foods.

Competing interests:
None declared

I, too, am skeptical that Hulihan has gotten to the bottom of brain
freeze. For one thing, he only tested one trigger site. The fact that he
was able to trigger brain freeze from the palate is interesting and
undoubtedly significant, but I am not persuaded he tested the only trigger
site or even the most important one.

Brain freeze for me begins inside the chest at about the level of the
sternum but subjectively somewhat to the right. I feel it travel up my
back (and esophagus) and into my head, eventually reaching the site at
which it blossoms into a brief headache.

I was never successful at avoiding brain freeze by paying attention
to palate sensations, but I have become nearly 100% successful at avoiding
it by by monitoring sensations at the point I described in the digestive
tract. Sensations there tell me reliably when I approach or recede from
the verge of brain freeze.

I also agree with others that brain freeze is not limited to a warm
environment. Perhaps the trigger site Hulihan tested might be thus
limited, but it must be obvious to many of us who are susceptible to brain
freeze that the phenomenon as a whole is not.

Brain freeze needs to be examined in a wider frame of reference. It
may well turn out to be part of a broader reflex, perhaps related (as
another reader suggests) to the mammalian diving reflex.

Competing interests:  
None declared