Natural redheads with the MC1R gene respond differently than others to pain and analgesics.
In 2005, a Canadian team showed people with red hair can tolerate significantly more pain than others and they also need less of a morphine-like painkiller to feel relief from pain.
But in 2009, researchers from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, found redheads were twice as likely to avoid dental visits because they felt they had increased sensitivity to pain.
This followed the researchers' earlier work, which showed redheads were less tolerant of pain than blondes or brunettes, as well as more resistant to both local and general anaesthetics.
The US team tested sensitivity to thermal pain – in which a metal probe applied to the skin was heated and cooled to varying temperatures – while the Canadians tested the pain of mild but increasingly-intense electrical shocks .
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