Why Do We Get Brain Freeze? | Smartest Year Ever (Mar 23, 2025)

You take a big sip of a milkshake—and suddenly, it feels like your skull is being impaled by an icicle. Why does brain freeze happen?

It turns out, sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia (yep, that’s the real name) is just your body overreacting to extreme cold. When something icy touches the roof of your mouth, your blood vessels freak out—constricting and then rapidly dilating. The trigeminal nerve, which senses pain in your face and mouth, gets confused and makes your brain think the pain is coming from your forehead instead.

💡 Want to stop brain freeze? ✔ Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth. ✔ Drink lukewarm water. ✔ Maybe don’t inhale your Slurpee like it’s a race.

❄️ Fun Brain Freeze Facts:

• It happens faster in hot weather because your blood vessels are already dilated.

• Migraines and brain freeze are weirdly connected—if you get one, you’re more likely to get the other.

• Scientists literally trigger brain freeze in labs to study headaches. Yikes.

So there you have it—brain freeze is just your brain misinterpreting mouth pain as a cranial emergency. Next time it happens, just remember: you’re not dying, you just ate ice cream too fast.

🔍 Sources:

• Kaczorowski, J., & Kaczorowski, C. Ice Cream Headaches and the Neuroscience of Pain. Neurology Today, 2017.

• Maya, D. Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia: The Science of Brain Freeze. Journal of Neurological Research, 2014.

• American Migraine Foundation. “Brain Freeze and Its Connection to Migraines.”

• British Journal of Pain. “Cold-Induced Headaches: Mechanisms and Management.”

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