Talk:Cold-stimulus headache

Unencyclopedic name
I'm very sorry that I did not see the discussion which led to this move to an odd and pedantic name for this article. I expect it to be called an "Ice-cream headache." My Gramps said that if I ate his home-made ice cream too fast I would get an ice cream headache, and he was right. I have never heard of a scientist going around and applying "cold stimuli" to victims' heads to produce "cold stimuli headaches." This is an embarrassment to the project. More people have suffered this pain from rapid eating of ice cream than from some application of other "cold stimuli." A "Cold pressor test" is an experiment of having someone put his hand into icewater, but it hurts the hand, not the head. This is a pseudo-scientific name. I agree that "brain freeze" is inappropriate since only cooling of the brain is required for the effect, without any actual freezing. An actual frozen brain would be fatal. Edison (talk) 02:52, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, the earlier discussion was clouded with arguments based solely on personal anecdotes of having heard or used brain freeze or ice-cream headache in casual conversation. I think ultimately the right choice was made; we base articles on published, reliable sources, not editors' personal beliefs or experiences. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 04:22, 26 May 2018 (UTC)


 * ...and, yet, from just a cursory glance at the titles of the first five sources cited, 4 of them have "ice cream headache" in their titles, and the fifth (the British medical journal)'s title uses "ice cream evoked headaches." I don't know if these sources have all been in the time since this discussion happened, or what all went down, but I must say i agree with Edison here.. the technical medical diagnostic term notwithstanding, articles should also be titled according to what they're most commonly known as..which appears tho be ice cream headache Firejuggler86 (talk) 23:38, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Unknown cause
So the general consensus is that the cause it unknown.

Just some anecdotal evidence : I disagree with the theories that say it is caused by the cooling of the roof of the mouth. If I swallow an ice cube quickly, I still get brain freeze about a minute later but my mouth is not unusually cold. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EwanKerr (talk • contribs) 12:38, 5 September 2019 (UTC)


 * I speak with zero medical/anatomical/metabolic authority, but i think that your anectodal experience is not irreconcilable with the roof of the mouth hypothesis, because the entire process involves some deep-reaching nerves & blood vessel responses, etc...meseemeth all of that could easily take up to a minute to take effect, even after the cold source is gone from the contact site Firejuggler86 (talk) 03:50, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

"Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia"
"Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia" is not the medical/scientific term for this phenomenon. It is not even a medical or scientific term for anything. There is a reason that one gets no search results on PubMed for "sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia" (see here), and that is that it's not a medical term at all, but merely a medical-sounding term. "Ganglioneuralgia" is a pseudo-medical nonsense word (which also gives no search results on PubMed, see here). For some reason, editors keep adding this with no WP:MEDRS to back it up. This should stop. TompaDompa (talk) 19:10, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I see a bunch of hits on Google Scholar for the term. Not sure how reliable any of the sources are, but the Journal of Sports Sciences  and Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports are put out by large mainstream publishers. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:05, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Google Scholar is unfortunately not particularly good when it comes to WP:MEDRS. The fact that what you've found is two sports science journals for a neurological condition should set off some alarms. Basically, this term is the "ucipital mapilary" of its time, only with more traction from laypeople. The fact that it is apparently a fairly common misconception that this is a real medical/scientific term is perhaps worthy of mention in this article, but we would of course need to source that properly as well. For what it's worth, the earliest use I've been able to locate is from 1982. I suppose we could try to contact Stephen Fried and ask where he got it from, but I doubt he would remember. TompaDompa (talk) 22:57, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, it’s still commonly used in numerous sources (such as healthline). Furthermore, “sphenopalatine” can refer to certain blood vessels/nerves in the head, “ganglio” may refer to “lymph node”, and “neuralgia” can refer to nerve inflammation. In my opinion, a good medical term would be “sphenopalatine neuralgia”. Also, English is subjective. All words - even “ganglioneuralgia” - were made up, and if a word becomes common enough to warrant its own definition, it shouldn’t be excluded for being artificial. With that being said, I also agree that the word should at least be mentioned, whether it’s controversial past be contextualized or not. TheXug (talk) 02:47, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
 * As always, we're limited to what we can properly source. What we want to say is that it is commonly but incorrectly claimed that this is the medical/scientific term for the phenomenon. That's true, but we don't have the sources we would need to make such a statement. So we're stuck not mentioning it, because we would be misleading our readers if we mentioned the term without explaining that it is in fact not the medical/scientific term. TompaDompa (talk) 12:37, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Synthetic cooling agents also cause the reflex
Synthetic agents such as WS-3 and WS-23 commonly used in e-liquids for vaping cause the sensation of brain freeze. I can't find relevant research on the matter, but the effect is anecdotally widely known among vapers who use liquids or disposables containing such agents. 2A00:C281:1113:B601:2078:605F:4F92:8DB8 (talk) 20:31, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Very few papers allude to this, such as this one about peppermint oil. It seems this subject is not well understood or researched. 84.110.114.45 (talk) 08:40, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

The Term Brain Freeze was used before 1991
Episode of Roseanne from February 1990 where she says "Oh, ice cream headache - brain freeze, huh?" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0688813/characters/nm0001683 So I dont know where the 1991 date came from 2601:3C5:8200:97E0:89DF:30EE:E270:7118 (talk) 02:39, 31 March 2024 (UTC)


 * You may be right, but an IMDB sitcom transcript isn't the sort of evidence you want to rely on when you're on Wikipedia... Sergecross73   msg me  13:16, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * thanks, you can watch the actual episode if you dont believe me . She 100% does say it. 1991 should be removed since it is false information of the year of origin on wikipedia. It existed prior to 1991. 2601:3C5:8200:97E0:280D:94E8:6E13:74C2 (talk) 23:11, 16 April 2024 (UTC)