Brain Freeze

It happened again. I have a hard time resisting a Wendy’s chocolate Frosty. So much so that it seems every time I buy one, I wind up with a brain freeze.The scientific name is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. I’m sure you’re impressed that I knew that, and you should be if I could pronounce it. But I got it from a podcast from Dr. Caroline Palavicino-Maggio, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School. Now you also know the boring stuff that I get interested in during my free time.According to Dr. Maggio, the phenomenon happens when the roof of your mouth detects a rapid temperature decline from the many sensitive nerves and tiny blood vessels that are there. The cold makes the blood vessels constrict, and it alerts the brain via those nerves that something isn’t right. The brain responds by telling you to stop consuming that ice cream, slurpy, or shaved ice, so fast, with a sudden headache.The trouble is…I should know it’s coming. I love ice cream way too much. So much so that I tend to eat it too fast…and I’ve had a lot of those sudden headaches because of it. You’d think the next time I’m about to down Shipwreck (my fave Ice Cream at Camp), I’d slow myself down and remember what happens when I eat it too fast. But nope, the Frosty just did it to me a couple of evenings ago.We do this with a lot of things. We know there are consequences to our actions, yet we steam forward without thinking through those consequences. That snarky comment. You know there will be fallout, but it blurts out anyway. The website that sucks you in. You know the damage you are doing to your mind and the guilt you will feel afterward. But you still go there. You know that if you turn the TV on, you’ll get nothing done the rest of the evening. But you grab the remote and hit the button.Why? I guess with brain freeze, the appeal of ice cream’s immediate taste and texture blocks out any memory of the headache. And it’s that way with temptations we struggle with the most.That’s why Paul lamented in Romans 7 that the evil he does not want to do, he winds up doing anyway (Rom. 7:15, 19). And so do we.I don’t mean for this to be a pop psychology lesson on overcoming a bad habit, though the Scripture does give us help in that regard. But I am grateful for the way Paul closed his mini-monologue in Romans 7 with these words, “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:24-25 NLT).Our battle against temptation will be a lifelong one. But thank God, he has won the war.