It happens almost instantly.

One bite of ice cream.

A freezing drink.

A few seconds later—

Brain freeze.

The pain can feel like it's coming from deep inside your head, even though the cold never actually reaches your brain.

So what is happening?

In Why Ice Cream Can Give You a Headache in Seconds, we explore the surprisingly fast chain of events behind brain freeze and why your nervous system can turn a mouthful of ice cream into a sudden burst of pain.

The scientific name is cold-stimulus headache.

When something extremely cold touches the roof of your mouth or the back of your throat, the temperature of nearby tissues drops rapidly.

Blood vessels respond to the sudden temperature change.

At the same time, nerves in the region det ...