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Definition
By Mayo Clinic staffIce cream headaches are brief, stabbing headaches that can happen when you eat or drink something cold. Ice pops, slushy frozen drinks, ice cream and other cold foods and drinks can have the same "brain freeze" effect.
But there's good news. Most ice cream headaches are gone in the time it would take you to say their medical name — "headache attributed to ingestion or inhalation of a cold stimulus."
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- Burkhart CG, et al. Ice cream headaches with cryotherapy of actinic keratoses. International Journal of Dermatology. 2006;45:1116.
- Kaczorowski M, et al. Ice cream evoked headaches (ICE-H) study: Randomized trial of accelerated versus cautious ice cream eating regimen. British Medical Journal. 2002;325:1445.
- Fuh JL, et al. Ice-cream headache - A large survey of 8359 adolescents. Cephalalgia. 2003;23:977.
- Garza I. Cold stimulus headache. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Nov. 6, 2009.
- Headache Classification Subcommittee of the International Headache Society. The international classification of headache disorders: 2nd edition. Cephalalgia. 2004;24(suppl):9.
- Silberstein SD, et al. The international classification of headache disorders, 2nd edition (ICHD-II) — Revision of criteria for 8.2 Medication — Overuse headache. Cephalalgia. 2005;25:460.
