On a side topic that has very little to do with plastic surgery, I read an article the other day on the scientific explanation for the well known phenomenon known as ‘brain freeze’. Almost everyone has experienced this excruciating pain that occurs from eating ice cream or drinking something very cold. The contact of the cold on the palate triggers pain similar to that of a migraine headache. Thankfully it is short-lived, usually lasting 30 seconds or less.
Many of the explanations that I read on brain freeze were unsatisfying. What causes it can be understood from basic oral anatomy and how nerve blocks are applied for palatal and upper jaw procedures. The feeling on your palate comes from two sets of nerves that come down along the septum and out behind your front teeth (anterior palatine nerve and foramen) and a separate set of paired nerves that come out near the back of your hard palate. (posterior palatine nerves and foramens) The anterior palatine nerve is a branch of the pterygopalatine ganglion. The posterior palatine nerve comes from the sphenopalatine ganglion off of the maxillary nerve. It is the stimulation of one or both of these nerve pathways by the intense cold that causes brain freeze. Both of these nerves (palatal injections if you ever had one for a dental procedure you would remember it) are often injected to make the upper teeth so they can undergo dental work or extraction.
Taking a bite of cold ice cream, for example, causes a reaction from the anterior or greater palatine nerve which it contacts right behind the front teeth. This abrupt change in temperature (from 98 degrees F to less than 32 degrees F) rapidly travels up the nerve to the pterygopalatine ganglion which acts as a relay station to the brain. This cold temperature causes pain in the nose and up into the brain, almost as if the brain itself was touched by the cold object. The posterior palatine nerve can also be stimulated if the contacting cold goes back far enough and it relays that sensation through the sphenopalatine ganglion to the brain.
The pain comes from a protective mechanism of the brain. To preserve heat, the frontal lobe of the brain’s blood vessels rapidly contract inducing a severe headache. Some feel that the pain is due to the vessel constriction, others feel that it is the subsequent influx of warm blood back in those vessels again.
The validity of this mechanism comes from how to get over brain freeze the quickest. Put your tongue directly behind the upper front teeth and hold it there for at least 10 seconds. Like magic, brain freeze is cured!
Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana