What is "ice cream headache"

n. A pain in the head from eating or drinking something cold.

A brain freeze, also known as ice-cream headache, cold-stimulus headache, trigeminal headache or its given scientific name sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia (meaning "nerve pain of the sphenopalatine ganglion"), is a form of brief pain or headache commonly associated with consumption (particularly quick consumption) of cold beverages or foods such as ice cream and ice pops. It is caused by having something cold touch the roof of the mouth ( palate), and is believed to result from a nerve response causing rapid constriction and swelling of blood vessels or a " referring" of pain from the roof of the mouth to the head. The rate of intake for cold foods has been studied as a contributing factor. Ice-cream headache is distinct from dentin hypersensitivity, a type of pain that can occur under similar circumstances.

The term ice-cream headache has been in use since at least 31 January 1937, contained in a journal entry by Rebecca Timbres published in the 1939 book We Didn't Ask Utopia: A Quaker Family in Soviet Russia. The first published use of the term brain freeze, as it pertains to cold-induced headaches, was on 27 May 1991.