This is a minimalist cat video, but it’s one of the best I’ve seen. The cat, named Napo, is having some ice cream.
Now brain freeze, also called the “ice cream headache,” is a real phenomenon, and scientists have theories about how it works. For one explanation, go here, and for a general overview go here.
h/t: Adrian
I’ll say an ice cream headache is a real phenomenon! I know exactly how it works! It feels like an ice pick right between the eyes! It doesn’t take much ice cream to do it, either.
Great description of the phenomenon, Sarah. The ice-pick nails it, as it were…
I am curiously immune from brain freeze. I don’t think I have ever had it like you describe, and believe me, I have eaten a lot of ice cream and cold liquids. Maybe an MRI or CAT scan would be illuminating!
a gap in the brain, perhaps? (LOL)
That’s how my head feels right now sans ice cream!
I was just wondering if this would affect your migraines (positively or adversely)!
When u have a migraine cold feels good but ice cream headache would probably still happen. My neck is giving me a tension headache (a post migraine phenomenon). I’m trying to get rid of it with anti spasm medication but so far nothing is working.
I wonder… Would it be possible to trick your migraine to convert to an ordinary brainfreeze, by eating some icecream?
No, once the brain freeze passes, the pain is still there. Freezing like you get at the dentist stops the pain for a while. It is the trigeminal nerve and other facial nerves that are irritated as the end product of a whole series of neuronal activity. Right now my eye and upper jaw and neck hurt like a knife to the eye.
Brain freeze without the ice cream? Talk about cruel and unusual….
b&
Yes I think so too!
You survived being hit between the eyes by an ice pick? Wow!
I had the hammer end of an ice hammer (“TerrorDactyl”, about 8th post here) whack me in the forehead one time when the ice was a lot thinner than it looked and the pick bounced back. Hurt like being hit in the forehead by an ice hammer, but was nothing like an ice cream headache.
If I knew where “El Runtissimo” was these days, I’d ask him what it’s like getting the sharp end in the cheek, but that was through falling off the back of the LandRover and much anaesthetic had been taken beforehand. He should have stuck to caving.
Mine are always behind my eyes, not between
Well, slightly above the eyes but in the middle, and a really intense, sudden, sharp pain for perhaps 15 or 20 seconds. I wonder if that is what this cat is experiencing, though, because it goes right back to licking the ice and seems to have no further problem. If it were the same kind of pain I think it would show more distress. Somebody told me it helps to press your tongue against the roof of your mouth to warm it up. Some people never experience this at all and think it is mildly amusing, but it is *really* unpleasant, if brief.
It is a paralyzing event for a short period of time to be sure. I recall years ago when milk shakes and malts were common, they were a big cause of this. Cold stuff through a straw.
Yeah, I used to get them from those, but I rarely do from ice cream.
Yup. Classic brain freeze.
And, just like a kid slurping down an ice cream cone, the cat only pauses for a moment before going right back at it with as much enthusiasm as ever…even the agony of a brain freeze is no match for the power of ice cream!
…hmmm…I might have to figure out some way to keep some ice cream in the car for Baihu for after an hike in the desert in summer….
b&
Make it plenty of water and shade.
Oh, He’s fine. When it’s hot, I keep his coat thoroughly soaked with my own supply of drinking water (often with lots of ice) while we’re on the trail. If he starts panting, I know I haven’t beennearly aggressive enough with the water — and, by now, I can recognize when he’s starting to feel the heat even before he starts panting. I’ll get in trouble long before he will, and I’ve got enough decades of experience in the heat to know when my own temperature is starting to rise.
The ice cream would just be a special treat, not something to lower his temperature. Humans enjoy that sort of thing, so why shouldn’t a cat?
b&
The funny comment I always like when you are in the Arizona desert and it’s 110 or 15 and some guy says oh, but it’s a dry heat. He is usually sitting in an air conditioned room, in Michigan.
110 dry is not nearly as painful as 110 muggy, as long as you have plenty of water and thick-soled shoes.
…and proper foot care for non-human animals, too!
If you wouldn’t walk barefoot on whatever you’re walking on…well, remember that cats and dogs have twice as many feet to hurt. And their paws are a significant fraction of their cooling systems, too.
When the temperatures get high, the desert sand can be more than a cat should be spending much time on, but not so hot that it’s a problem if Baihu wants to get off my shoulders and walk for a bit — which he sometimes does even in the heat. But a concrete sidewalk would be a problem even for that much, and asphalt could cause near-instant burning.
If Baihu were more of an urban walking cat, I’d investigate booties for him…but, as it is, my shoulders are all the protection he needs from the heat of the ground.
b&
If you ever do get boots for Baihu, we must see pictures. I cannot imagine a feline tolerating footwear.
Neither can I, which is why I rather doubt I’ll ever make the attempt….
b&
maybe some jesus sandals?
Why? It’s not like there’s any water ’round here for him to walk on….
b&
Ah, yes. “Dry heat.” Suckers an awful lot of newbies…they think they’re just fine because they’re not sweating. See? Dry shirt. Thing is…they’re sweating bullets at first, save it’s evaporating faster than it can accumulate. Then they’re dehydrated before they know it…and then their sweating starts to slow down because there’s nothing left to sweat…and then their body temperatures start to skyrocket, but they only feel a bit uncomfortable and think they can keep powering through it…and then collapse, with death potentially not far behind. Heat exhaustion is common and instantly recognized by people with experience, and easy to recover from…slam lots of water, find shade and take a break if possible, back way off on the exertion level regardless. And easy to avoid by staying on top of the water in the first place. But heat stroke is a medical emergency, and the transition from heat exhaustion to heat stroke can happen seemingly in the blink of an eye.
…and then, the worst of it is that we get at least several weeks of monsoon conditions, where the temperatures are well north of 100, often still above 110…and we get lots of humidity. Maybe not as much humidity as in Florida or the Midwest, but the temperatures are way higher than than they ever see there. And that’s when you really have to watch out, because evaporation might not be enough to cool you no matter how much you drink. You can keep going with elevated body temperatures, but you have to really pay lots of attention to your condition and be ready to call it off in a real hurry.
b&
I was reading a collection of JBS Haldane’s essays in which he several times referred to his father proving (in the most direct way possible) that a human being can survive air temperatures up to 80degrees Centigrade for a half an hour.
“But it’s a dry heat!”
Well, yeah. That does make a difference, but having worked under the Arabian desert Sun at 50 centigrade, I do not want to repeat the experience.
Being on a relatively cool Persian gulf island at 38 degrees when the tail end of the monsoon rolled in and took it from 20% RH to 80% RH in a matter of minutes is another experience I don’t particularly want to repeat. Unless you pay me quite well.
Yeah, we get that here, too. Well, okay, 50°C is the record, but 47°C is not at all unusual and 45°C is quite common. For weeks at a time, even.
…still remember the record day…had a bunch of errands I had to run on the bicycle. Open the front door, and it feels just like opening the oven door as you’re reaching to remove whatever you were cooking….
b&
What was about to get cooked was you.
First day in the desert, pulling the power cable for the unit as soon as the truck arrived (while my colleague stopped them from unloading the lab by pushing it off the back of the truck). 100A 3-phase cable. Only long enough to get to the switch board through the Trough Of Slime behind the shakers.
I got the job done, but I was puking and barely able to walk afterwards. I recovered, but it was a nasty introduction to heat stroke.
You’re actually kinda lucky to have survived. By the time nausea sets in, you’re in deep shit…especially since you probably haven’t been drinking enough water to have the fluids to spare.
One time I’ve gotten to the nausea stage, sometime not long after the turnaround point on a rather long bike ride. Found some shade, was barely able to rest and force myself to drink too-warm water…about 20 minutes or so later, I was able to get back on the bike and made it home at a pace that can only be described as extremely relaxed.
b&
Yeah, I was pretty unwell. My first day in the desert, and very educational it was. Apart from the flameproofing of the coveralls, I didn’t realise why people were wearing them until I knelt down on the sand to start wiring up the sensor cables.
I had this cooler that plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter. It was designed for canned drinks. It wouldn’t keep ice cream frozen for long, but maybe long enough for a treat for Baihu. Baihu wouldn’t mind if it was a bit soft anyway.
Yeah…my parents had one, too…but, similarly, wouldn’t be enough for ice cream.
I’ve got a regular insulated cooler that might work if I put the ice cream in the middle of lots of ice gel packs.
b&
If you ever want to give humidity a try, go to Guam or the Philippines. In the summer it is an experience you don’t forget.
I visited my parents when they lived in Nigeria. Something like 95% humidity year round. I’ll take the dry any time.
Actually…come to think of it, that’s another “feature” that humid places have that arid ones are sorely lacking in: shade. You can pretty much take it for granted that, if you’ve got lots of humidity, you’ve got lots of vegetation around you, as both cause and effect.
Damned little shade to be had from a saguaro, and, many places, that’s as good as it gets. here.
(The nicer places also have palos verdes, which, this time of year, are bursting with rather tasty seed pods….)
b&
The things we do for our kittehs:-)
Maybe try a small cooler inside a cooler plus the gel packs. But freeze the smaller one with the icecream overnight first. It might work.
…or dry ice should definitely do the trick….
b&
Paging Diana…the article discusses a correlation between brain freeze and migraines….
b&
In medical school I had a lecture in which an anatomy professor discussed the “brain freeze.” His theory was that it had to do with vagus nerve stimulation in the esophagus (due to the cold). The vagus can have various effects on the autonomic nervous system, including heart rate, vasodilation/constriction, etc. I think he may have been on to something. I like the vagus theory better than the sinuses theory. Maybe I should do an experiment to see if holding cold stuff in the mouth without swallowing has the same effect.
sub
Sugar is not good for cats’ teeth. Sorry to be a pill, but it’s a problem.
A spoonful (literally; that’s all the cat is offered) is no more a problem for a cat than for an human. If it were something more than an occasional treat, yes; then it would be a problem. But the odd indulgence here and there is no more a problem for a cat than Jerry’s famous gustatory excursions are for him.
b&