Getting Inside Your Head

I have time to do this stuff, and maybe you don't, so I thought I would share with everyone my research on a common medical situation to which I fell prey not long ago whilst enjoying a drink of ice water.

Medical science knows it as The Heartbreak of Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia, and we lay folk call it "ice cream headache." Brain freeze. The Chilly Willie (not to be confused with The Wet Willie.)

Classic Schoolboy Wet Willie

Wet Willie, Jr.

You guzzle a Slurpee or snowball or you gobble a spoonful of Breyer's or you go all in on a Popsicle, and you get it. 

Brain freeze is also called ice cream headache, or cold  headache. It is a short-term headache typically linked to the rapid consumption of ice cream, ice pops, or very cold drinks. It happens when a lot of something really cold hits your upper palate - the roof of your mouth. It's even worse when the rest of you is really hot.

And it's more than that the momentary unpleasant you get from that Icee. Up at Harvard Medical School, the brainiacs are looking into them, with an eye toward curing migraines and pain resulting from brain injuries.

So far, we know that the cold stuff causes our blood vessels to constrict quickly, and the best cure is gulping down some warm water right on top of the Sundae.

Oh, and we also know that it doesn't have to be food or drink that causes a melon cramp. You could get one from sticking an ice cold drain pipe in your mouth, which would also result in failing out of plumbing school.

Next up: science will try to figure out a name for the time between the time a falling hammer hits you on top of the head (you would be surprised at how often this happens to me) and the pain begins. You just about have time to say, "Oh man, is this ever gonna HURT!"