Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, brain stuff, it's Christian Seger. We get headaches for a lot of reasons. Sometimes foods like chocolate, cheese, or cured meat can cause them. Other times it's stress or maybe changes in our sleep habits. Headaches are also caused by eye strain, sinus problems, coughing, and even sex. And if you're really unlucky, they're a sign of neurological problems. But do you know what causes headaches and over one third of the population ice cream?
Diabolical evil ice cream otherwise known as a brain freeze or a quote cold stimulus headache in more lofty circles. The ice cream headache only requires two things. First, something cold touching the roof of your mouth, and second, a hot environment like a summer day or a sauna or a yoga class full of sweaty people. That's where we all usually eat ice cream. Right. Brain freeze is caused by both a constriction and dilation of the blood vessels
in your head. There's a nerve center just above your mouth, and when it gets cold, it signals the anterior cerebral artery to widen, trying to heat your brain with warm blood. Since the skull is a closed structure, the sudden rush of blood could be increasing pressure, which causes the pain we feel. It's kind of a horrible stabbing achey feeling, but the warm air around you causes these blood vessels to restrict again, relieving the pain about ten to twenty
seconds after its onset. This experience is reportedly similar to a migraine headache, albeit a very short one. It's possible the influx of blood is supposed to protect your brain from extreme cold. The pain is usually in the mid frontal area, but it can be unilateral in other parts of the brain. But don't worry. Experts say that ice cream isn't going to give you brain damage or anything.
In fact, when they're correcting aneurysms, doctors sometimes lower your brain temperature down to sixty four degrees fahrenheit or seventeen point eight degrees celsius. So ice cream ain't no thing, except there's only one cure for brain freeze. Never eat ice cream again. No, I'm just kidding. In one article about these headaches, a researcher actually said ice cream abstinence is not indicated, so keep eating all the ice cream you want, but slow it down a bit there, Hoss.
Try to eat in small bites and avoid the roof of your mouth. Also, you may be more likely to get brain freeze if you already get migraines. The science isn't confirmed on that, but since the vascular response of ice cream headaches is similar to the experience of migraine sufferers, they may be are vulnerable. Researchers are investigating this connection
now in hopes of developing even better painkillers. Check out the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.