Too Cold To Handle: The Science Behind Brain Freeze

When you eat ice cream or something cold, you will probably experience brain freeze. It happens when you gulp a cold substance too quickly for your brain to cope with.

Brain freeze is a way of telling your body to slow down and take it easy. It doesn’t feel particularly nice, but at least it works.

Here’s how it happens: when you slurp up a really cold drink or eat ice cream too fast you are rapidly changing the temperature in the back of your throat, which feeds blood to the brain. 

The brain can’t actually feel pain despite its many sensors, but actually brain freeze occurs on the outer layer of brain tissue, where the throat meets. When the cold hits, it causes a strange feeling which is what causes the pain you feel when you get brain freeze.