Image via WikipediaICE SCREAM
Spoon. Pint of ice cream. Tastes great; hurts your head. Badly. Colloquially, the affliction is called an "ice cream headache" or "brain freeze" but it has a medical name too -- sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia -- which, basically, is a scientific way to say "nerve pain" in the area afflicted by the icy goodness.Why does it happen? (more after the break)
The roof of your mouth, especially the back thereof, has a lot of nerve endings. Those nerves are not used to being in contact with anything frozen and, when they do in fact get chilled, assume that this is happening across your whole body. The nerves send the message to your brain, which thinks you've just lost a great deal of body heat, and to fight it off, the blood vessels in your head contract. When the blood vessels return to their normal size, the blood in your head rushes back. Instant headache.
There isn't a great way to fend them off, either. Some doctors suggest quickly pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth, in hopes of warming it back up. Or you can just eat the ice cream slowly. (But who wants to do that?)
Bonus fact: The world's largest ice cream manufacturer and distributor is Unilever. They own Breyer's, Ben and Jerry's, Klondike, Good Humor, Popsicle, and ... Slim Fast.
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