Brain freeze (or “sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia”) is the kind of head pain that people joke about over a double fudge sundae. But the ice cream headache is real enough to have its own code in the International Classification of Headache Disorders as “headache attributed to ingestion or inhalation of a cold stimulus.” Researchers are studying brain freeze as a way to gain a better understanding of other headache disorders such as migraine and post-traumatic headache.
Studying Blood Flow During Brain Freeze
Lead researcher, Jorge Serrador, PhD, of Harvard medical school, along with a team of researchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National University of Ireland in Galway, Ireland, recently studied the effects of brain freeze on 27 adults in a laboratory. Researchers say brain freeze is an ideal way to learn about headaches because it is easy to induce. In Serrador’s study, volunteer subjects drank ice water from straws pressed against the roof of their mouths and raised a hand when they felt pain. Researchers monitored the velocity of blood flow to the subjects’ brains using a transcranial Doppler test. They found that once a brain freeze was induced, blood flow to the brain’s frontal lobe through the anterior cerebral artery increased, enlarging the size of the artery and raising pressure inside the skull. As the pain subsided, the artery constricted.
The researchers, who presented their data at the experimental Biology 2012 Conference in San Diego in April, are unsure what causes the pain itself. It could result from the change in the pressure within the skull when the artery dilates, or from the trigeminal nerve in the roof of the mouth delivering pain signals. It may also simply be that the brain is sensitive to temperature changes. However it happens, the researchers believe it is possible that similar blood flow issues could contribute to other types of headache, including migraine and post-traumatic headache. If that is the case, new treatments could be developed to control the blood flow and ease the pain.
“This is important from a science perspective because we are still unsure what role that changes in brain blood flow play in headache,” Serrador told Head Wise via e-mail in June 2012.
Serrador says that his work does show that brain blood flow increases prior to the development of pain, which suggests it may play a role in headache development. If researchers are able to find a definite connection, Serrador is hopeful that this could lead to new treatments for headache.
No Breakthroughs From Brain Freeze Research
Some headache specialists aren’t overly excited by the study of brain freeze. Seymour Diamond, MD, told CNN that he is wary of the results.
“I don’t think this is going to be a breakthrough for migraine or post-concussion headaches,” he told CNN.
Dr. Diamond, who is executive chairman of the National Headache Foundation and founder and director emeritus of the Diamond Headache Clinic, refers to a work by John Graham and Harold G. Wolff, published in a 1938 issue of the Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry. At that time, those researchers had already indicated that dilatation of the blood vessels was a contributing factor to migraine and that the dilatation caused the surrounding nerves to produce pain.
