Brain freeze offers new insight into headache
27 Apr 2012 by Evoluted New Media
The phenomenon of brain freeze – associated with eating ice-cream and cold drinks – has been used as a proxy to study migraines and other types of headaches.
Researchers in America recruited 13 healthy adults and monitored the blood flow in several brain arteries using transcranial Doppler while they sipped iced water through a straw pressed up against their palate – ideal conditions for bringing on brain freeze.
The researchers – led by Jorge Serrador from Harvard Medical School – believed that brain freeze and other headache types might be bought on by local changes in brain blood flow.
Volunteers were asked to raise their hand once they felt the pain of brain freeze, and then again when the pain dissipated. The experiment was repeated but with volunteers sipping water at room temperature.
By bringing on brain freeze in the lab and studying blood flow in the volunteers’ brains, the researchers showed that the sudden headache associated with brain freeze is triggered by an abrupt increase in blood flow in the anterior cerebral artery. The pain disappears when the artery constricts.
Serrador and his colleagues speculate that this dilation and quick constriction might be a type of self-defence for the brain.
“The brain is one of the relatively important organs in the body, and it needs to be working all the time,” Serrador said. “It’s fairly sensitive to temperature so vasodilation might be moving warm blood inside tissue to make sure the brain stays warm.
However, because the brain is a closed structure, the sudden influx of blood could increase the pressure in the brain and cause pain, Serrador said. The following vasoconstriction might bring the pressure down before it reaches dangerous levels.
The researchers believe similar alterations in blood flow might be responsible for migraines, post-traumatic headaches and other types of headache. They hope their findings could lead to new treatments for a variety of different headache types by controlling blood flow, or stopping sudden vasodilation to alter a headache’s course.
