Diseases & Conditions

Ice cream headaches

You know the feeling. One bite into an ice cream cone and you're struck with a stabbing headache. Ice pops, slushy frozen drinks, and other cold foods and drinks can have the same "brain freeze" effect.

But there's good news. Most ice cream headaches are gone in the time it would take you to say their medical name — "headache attributed to ingestion or inhalation of a cold stimulus."

Ice cream headaches cause sharp, stabbing pain in the forehead. The pain often peaks about 30 to 60 seconds after it begins. Ice cream headaches rarely last longer than a minute or two.

Ice cream headaches are caused by cold material moving across the roof of your mouth and the back of your throat, as happens when you eat ice cream quickly or gulp a cold drink. Scientists are still unsure about the exact mechanism that causes this pain.

One theory suggests that the cold food or drink may temporarily alter blood flow in your brain, causing a brief headache. Some researchers suspect that the pain is referred from your mouth to your head via the trigeminal nerve, which delivers sensory information from the face, teeth and tongue to the brain.

Ice cream headaches rarely need treatment. Typically, the pain quickly disappears after the cold food or drink is swallowed.