WHAT'S UP WITH...BRAIN FREEZE

If you feel a sudden strong zap of pain in your head as you sip a milkshake, here’s why.

- KAYLA BLANTON

NOTHING RUINS the first soft-serve of summer like a lightning bolt of pain shooting through your frontal lobe. You may have experienced brain freeze often as an overexcited, slushy-scarfing kid, but any time you eat or drink something very cold, you risk feeling that intense (but thankfully brief) sensation all over again.

WHAT CAUSES BRAIN FREEZE?

Brain freeze is medically known as cold neuralgia or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, and it happens when the roof of your mouth or throat is cooled too quickly, explains Heather Viola, D.O., a primary care physician at Mount Sinai Doctors-Ansonia.