My Brain Hurts!

Growing up in Nashville, when global warming was still years away and there came big snows in the winter, my mother would make snow cream out of fresh snow. Not the first snow, mind you. That snow was dirty because everyone knows the first snow of the winter always brings all the dust and junk from the skies down with it. But the second snow? Now that was good for human consumption. So imagine about 4 inches of snow on top of a dense bush in your front yard. Take a spoon and scrap off the top layer of about an inch. Underneath lies clean, pristine snow. Perfect for snow cream. Scoop a large amount into a big bowl. Go inside your house. Add milk, sugar and vanilla flavoring (and maybe an egg, but then you’d be eating raw egg, right?), stir and then, if you do it like my Mom did, you freeze it while your children wait anxiously for you to say it’s now ready to eat! It’s not gourmet ice cream, mind you, but for kids it’s quite delicious. So now you’re eating your snow cream, rather rapidly because, after all, you’re just a little kid.....and HORRORS....your head feels like someone just used it for batting practice! Brain freeze! Today, when I was enjoying an Icee after lunch, I decided it was time to figure out what causes the horrendous but short-lived headaches caused from ingesting ice cream, milkshakes, Icees, etc. In an article by Joseph Hulihan, he theorizes that "when something cold touches the roof of your mouth, it triggers a cold headache. The cause is a dilation of blood vessels in the head. The dilation may be caused by a nerve center located above the roof of your mouth -- when this nerve center gets cold, it seems to over-react and tries to heat your brain." Heat your brain, you say? That’s what the man said. And suddenly that "this is your brain on drugs" commercial comes to mind where the eggs are frying. This is how my warped 45 year old brain works. Perhaps it got too cold and my body tried to heat it up.