How to Prevent and Get Rid of Brain Freeze

It's ice-cream-eating season and the "Flavor Guru" at Ben & Jerry's has tips on how to avoid brain freeze. His best tip is really simple: Just turn the spoon upside down.

Brain freeze happens when something cold touches a bundle of nerves on the top of your mouth, near the back. Those nerves are called your sphenopalatine ganglion, say that five times fast.

Turning your spoon upside down helps, because it allows your tongue to heat up the ice cream a little bit before there's any direct contact with that group of nerves. That technique won't really work with something like a Slurpee though. So here are three quick ways to get rid of brain freeze:

Press your thumb or tongue up into the roof of your mouth to warm the nerves back up.
Breathe with your hands cupped over your mouth. This the heat from your breath to warm the nerves back up.
Drink something hot.