How to fix your brain freeze, fast

By TASTE, 29 September 2017

You know the feeling: all you want is ice cream but all you get is instant pain when the first frosty spoonful comes into contact with the roof of your mouth. Why? And how can you make it better (please!)?

Brain freeze, or an ice-cream headache (a.k.a. sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, if your tongue isn’t too cold to get you past that mouthful), is a real thing and it happens when you eat or drink something ice cold way too fast.

Your blood vessels react instantly by constricting, but your body’s also trying to dilate them to warm up the area. The resulting temperature war sends a message to your confused brain: pain!

But it’s easily fixed: swallow the ice cream, press your tongue to the roof of your mouth to warm it up, let the hurting stop and move on to the next spoonful. Slowly does it, this time round.

Good to know right? Put the theory to the test.

Browse our ice-cream recipe collection here.

TASTE

Article by TASTE

The TASTE team is a happy bunch of keen cooks and writers, always on the look out for the next food trend or the next piece of cake.
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