It’s BMJ week on NCBI ROFL! Each day this week we will feature a fun article from a British Medical Journal holiday issue. Enjoy!

Ice cream evoked headaches (ICE-H) study: randomised trial of accelerated versus cautious ice cream eating regimen

“Cold stimulus headache, also known as ice cream headache, is a common problem and is reported to occur in about a third of a randomly selected population. It was further suggested that the ice cream headache could be induced only in hot weather… we compared the effect of two ice cream eating regimens on the incidence of ice cream induced headaches in a prospective randomised manner. The study was carried out during the winter to test whether this phenomenon was restricted to hot weather only…Participants who received green dot questionnaires were given 100 ml of ice cream and were told to eat it in >30 seconds. They were further instructed to have about half their ice cream left after 30 seconds and then to continue at their own pace. Participants who received red dot questionnaires were given 100 ml of ice cream but were instructed to eat it in <5 seconds. The temperature of the ice cream was not formally regulated throughout the study… Twenty (27%) of 73 students in the accelerated eating group reported ice cream headache compared with 9 (13%) of 72 students in the cautious eating group.”

Read the full article here.

Image: flickr/HurleyFamily

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