The Black Magic of Cold Things

This is an article on "What causes brain freeze?" written by Chanie Kirschner from Mother Nature Network. The author suggests a question, "What exactly causes brain freeze? And here’s a better question — how do I prevent it from happening in the first place?" the author than explains what is the reason for it. I am sure everyone has experience the brain freeze. Author Chanie starts with pointing out the bad with the ice-cream. The author says ice cream gives us headaches, which hurts a lot. The good thing about headaches is that they are usually over in a matter of seconds, or at most a couple minutes according to the article. Chanie says, for her, they always seem to come on slowly, with the pain starting at a 3 and working its way up to an 8 or 9 almost instantaneously, but they usually subside as quickly as they come, and thank God for that. The author says headaches from ice-cream do not come only from his ice-cream. Headaches can come from eating any really cold food or drink. “Like Slurpees”, she says. Chanie also says, "In fact, in 1994, 7-Eleven even trademarked the term Brain freeze to use in conjunction with its delicious frosty drink." then the author asks the readers, "So what causes ice cream headaches in the first place?". She says it has to do with the nerve receptors above the roof of your mouth." this seems like an interesting thing to know for the science, especially biology majors. According to the author when you take a bite of ice cream, some of it touches the top of your mouth, otherwise known as the hard palate. "That in turn triggers the nerves above the palate to cool down" and does that very quickly. The nerves send an emergency message to the brain that it’s about to get cold up there, and the blood vessels in the brain constrict to accommodate, Chanie. Then she says, "When the warm blood rushes through the blood vessels again []. You get a searing headache similar to a migraine." she says this is nothing to worry about because this kind of headache does not signify a serious problem. "So what to do?” the author says. Chanie suggest that if your ice cream headache has already started, chances are it’ll be over quickly. To speed things up a bit, you can touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth and hold it there, warming up your palate and calming down the brain’s reaction, Chanie suggests. Which actually works, I just tried it. then Chanie says that, to keep yourself from getting the freeze in the first place, try eating cold foods slower than usual and keep that ice cream away from the roof of your mouth if you can. She says it might seem impossible, but it’s not. She tried to research its efficacy for this article, and not only is it possible; it worked for her, according. The author have a funny sense of humor I think according to the way she explained everything. On top of that this is what she writes at the end: "That’s right, I gave myself a brain freeze for this article. That’s how dedicated I am [as] dedicated as Matt Damon gaining 40 pounds for a role." Then she rapes it up with suggesting the reader "So have no fear. You can still enjoy your favorite ice cream sans the splitting headache. Just be sure to save some for me."

Link to the article: http://shine.yahoo.com/event/green/what-causes-brain-freeze-2494180/