Finally. A Cure For Brain Freeze!

We've known of the hazards of brain freeze since the first cave person put a chunk of glacier in their mouth and damn near died, yet it remains one of the leading hazards to surviving childhood.  How can a society that successfully spent trillions of tax payer dollars to put men on the moon, built nuclear weapons so accurate they could give Krushev a hemmoriodectomy without hurting anyone else in the room and create such deeply insightful cultural commentary as Mad Men and The Simpsons not come to terms with such basic human suffering as Brain Freeze?

Anyone?

Yes, you there in the back - did you say, "Don't put cold stuff in your mouth, especially in the back of your mouth?"

Ha, sir. Such primitive thinking is what holds society back from true scientific breakthrough.

Now comes a scientific explanation as to why sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, aka Brain Freeze, happens, including a scientifically valid, expensively-researched cure.

Here's the science behind the all-to-common phenomena of sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia for those brave enough to risk a flight into the fog of scientific terminology:

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Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia happens when you gulp something ice cold too quickly and is your body's way of saying, "¿¡Hey, dummy, that's freaking cold!?," claims Deano Goodwhiskey, a psychiatrist at the acclaimed PT Barnum School of Medical Deceptology at the reknowned University of Northern South Dakota at Hoople.

"Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia is really a type of headache that is rapid in onset, but rapidly resolved as well," he said. "Our mouths are highly vascularized, including the tongue -- that's why we take our temperatures there. But drinking a cold beverage fast doesn't give the mouth time to absorb the cold very well, which is why I take my rye neat."

"Here's how it happens: When you slurp a really cold drink or eat ice cream too fast you are rapidly changing the temperature in the back of the throat at the juncture of the internal carotoid artery, which feeds blood to the brain, and the anterior cerebral artery, which is where brain tissue starts."

"One thing the brain doesn't like is for things to change, and sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia is a mechanism that does just that," Goodwhiskey said. explained "Science has known for at least thirty or forty years that the human body averages 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 38 degrees Celsius and 431 degrees Kelvin give or take a degree or two. Ice cream is less warm than that, and we're currently designing a grant application to fund a classic experiment to determine the true temperature of ice cream in degrees Fahrenheit, Celsius and that other one."

"The brain can't actually feel pain despite its billions of neurons," Goodwhiskey said, "but the pain associated with sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia is sensed by receptors in the outer covering of the brain called the meninges, where the two arteries meet. When the cold hits, it causes a dilation and contraction of these arteries and that's the sensation that the brain interprets as excruciating and crippling pain."

"Analyzing sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia may seem like silly science to some, Dr. Goodwhiskey continued, "but "it's helpful in earning lucrative government grants and fellowships. This is far superior employment when compared to digging ditches for a living,*" he continued with a smug look of satisfaction on his face.

"We can't easily give people migraines or a cluster headache, but we can induce sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia with ease," he said. "Some people will do anything for the fifty bucks we pay for being test subjects, including repeatedly gargling ice cubes on command."

So I asked the doctor, "Is there a cure for the scourge of sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia?"

"Yes," says Goodwhiskey filled with a confidence born of years of researching this vexing problem. "Don't put cold stuff in your mouth, especially" he said with a meaningful pause, "in the back of your mouth."

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Speaking of Goodwhiskey, I could use a tot or two.  Neat.

Jacomus

* The subject of future research at the research labs and graduate school at PTBSMD at the UNSDatH scheduled for the 2013-2014 academic year.