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The cause of an ice cream headache is ice cream. Who knew sweets could be so mean?
According to the information I found, the exact cause is unknown.
About one in three suffer severe pain shortly after ingesting ice cream or other cold food or drink. The pain is often of a stabbing sensation or a severe ache that typically lasts only about 10 or 20 seconds.
The pain could last for several minutes, but that's rare. The pain is typically felt in the middle of the forehead, behind the eye or in the temple.
Experiments on this phenomenon suggest the pain occurs only in hot weather, and that contact between the cold substance and the rear palate - the roof of your mouth - causes the sensation.
A common explanation for the cause of an ice cream headache is the dilation of blood vessels in the head. The dilation might be caused by a never center located above the roof of one's mouth. When the nerve center gets cold, it tends to overreact and heat your brain.
This idea is advanced in a 1997 article in the British Medical Journal. Joseph Hulihan, then an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at Philadelphia's Temple University, penned the article.
An ice cream headache is not a sign of anything serious. You're not a medical freak because butter brickle makes your head throb.
The only way to avoid an ice cream headache is to not eat ice cream and that's only slightly less cruel than the ice cream headache.
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