Today is Summer solstice in my part of the world. Summer is finally officially here. Long days. Picnics. Barbecues. Days at the river. Hide and Seek after dark. Games and playing and idling away the days. Iced tea and lemonade. While any time of the year is time for ice cream, summer it when ice cream is at it's best! My favorite time of the year. Well, except for the brain freeze that follows those iced drinks and ice cream.
I think brain freeze is a rite of summer. We are so happy to take a long gulp of that cold drink we forget our heads can suffer. So what causes it?Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center neuroscientist Dwayne Godwin, Ph.D., explains how it works.
"Brain freeze is really a type of headache that is rapid in onset, but rapidly resolved as well," he said. "Our mouths are highly vascularized, including the tongue -- that's why we take our temperatures there. But drinking a cold beverage fast doesn't give the mouth time to absorb the cold very well."Okay, so we gulp down an iced drink or we eat our ice cream too fast and the back of our throats where all those feeling things tie together get really cold really fast. Blood is racing to the brain. Warning lights are going off. And then the brain screams, "STOP IT, DAMMIT!" (you know how to brain hates change) and makes us suffer like badly scolded children by giving us a sudden really bad headache.
It doesn't last long (the longer ones are hell!) and then it just goes away. In the meantime, we've actually stopped, just like the brain wanted us to do. Temperature in the mouth goes back to normal and we all live happily ever after, but at a slower paced than before.
Getting rid of brain freeze is almost as easy as receiving it. Try one of these:
- Put your tongue to the roof of your mouth. It will warm it all up and you can live happily ever after.
- Sip some warmish water.
- Live with it while you make faces and cringe. I mean, it doesn't actually last long. And remember you won't die from it.
peace~~~
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