A growing body of research shows that people with red hair need larger doses of anesthesia and often are resistant to local pain blockers like Novocaine.
Researchers believe redheads are more sensitive to pain because of a mutation in a gene that affects hair color.
A 2004 study showed that redheads require, on average, about 20 percent more general anesthesia than people with dark hair or blond coloring. And in 2005, researchers found that redheads are more resistant to the effects of local anesthesia, such as the numbing drugs used by dentists.
The mutation in the MC1R gene also occurs in brunets, although it’s less common. In the latest study, the researchers tested for the MC1R gene variant, finding it in 65 of 67 redheads and in 20 of 77 people with brown or black hair. ....
From comment #90:
I can think of at least four doctors who could benefit from understanding that making a patient feel like a hallucinating, crazy, lying baby when they are actually feeling their root canal is not okay, and I’m glad there’s some public ’science’ to back this up now.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/the-pain-of-being-a-redhead
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