Friday, August 7, 2009

Oh, How We Suffer!

I am distressed to hear from Well about this downside to the overall awesomeness of life as a redhead: apparently, we don't respond as readily to anesthetic as people with hair of other hues.

The speculation is that a gene mutation associated with red hair is also linked to pain receptors, making the bearers of said genes more sensitive to pain and less responsive to anesthesia. The story specifically discusses the possibility that redheads may be less likely to go to the dentist than other people, perhaps because it's more painful for them.

Distressed though I am on behalf of my color family, I'm not sure I myself got my red from this particular mutation, since I've never noticed that I'm more sensitive to painful stimuli than my dark-haired friends and sisters. In fact, I'm punching myself in the head right now, just for fun!

OK, that part is untrue.

I've never avoided the dentist due to fear of pain, though, and have found the anesthetic used on me to be quite effective. More than once I've bitten half through my lip in the aftermath of a dental procedure because I couldn't feel it (when it's numb, isn't a lip pretty much twice as big as usual, and always in the way of whatever you're trying to say or eat or sip cautiously through a straw?)

More research is clearly called for, given that this is a topic of such obvious importance to the world.

In the meantime, dentists, if you have red-haired patients, give them some extra drugs. Maybe that's what my dentists have been doing with me, and I never knew.

Oh, hey, I did need an extra dose of anesthetic drops at my last eye exam, where they touch that thing to your eyeball to measure the pressure. I kept involuntarily flinching because I could feel it touching. It didn't hurt, exactly, but it felt weird enough that I couldn't keep my head still.

Maybe my variant of the red gene is extra sensitive to eyeball touches, but not tooth pain. I'm telling you, we need more research!

2 comments:

erinserb said...

ya know, I heard about the anesthetic/redhead correlation. Hmmmm, I wonder if curly hair makes for a low tolerance of pain. The dentist always asks me if it still hurts and I usually end up saying yes.

Oh well, so much for naturally curly hair

A'Llyn said...

My answer to this and every question: more research! :)