I have always heard that redheads feel less pain and require more anesthesia to knock them out during a procedure and I always thought it was a lie but it is actually backed by science. So how does hair color a play role in pain and why will they need more drugs to knock them out during surgery?
If you do not know what extreme pain feels like at least in its barest minimum, then stepping on a Lego can help solve that problem. Even when you feel the terrible pain from an accident, pain is still very difficult to understand for scientists and this is partly because our body has different ways of telling us that we feel pain as a result of the different nerve endings that are associated with recognizing different types of pain such as pressure pain or heat pain but these pains might not be perceived the way it should as a result of different signals that can raise or lower pain perception.
Also, it is very difficult for doctors to measure pain objectively like how they do for blood pressure, temperature and heart rate rather they use methods that makes the individual determine how much pain they are feeling. These can include charts showing smiley faces to extremely frown face which is highly subjective, also, people have different pain tolerance and this makes it extremely difficult to tell how well a new pain medication is working. While all these exists, researchers have been able to bring out certain groups of people who respond to pain quite differently from others and this are redheads.
In 2005, it was noticed that people with Red Hair respond to pain medications differently from non-redheads. Studies also showed at at least 20% or more anesthesia gas is needed by redheads compared to non-redheads in other for them to stop responding to painful electrical stimulus. They also noticed the same thing for local anesthesia like Lidocaine used during dental procedures. But because they are sensitive to some types of pain doesn't mean they are sensitive to all because they are less sensitive to some other types of pain also they have an altered response to opioid medication.
Ours hairs have different colors and they come from Melanocytes through pigments known as Melanin. Melanin exist in two main type which are Eumelanin (brownish pigment), and Pheomelanin (Reddish-Yellow) pigment so if you are dark-skin, then you have more Eumelanin compared to someone with light skin. Pheomelanin is produced in parts like lips, and other part of our body that are fair or pinkish. People who produce excess pheomelanin have their cells stressed when they are under the sun as a result of lack of protection.
The body uses MC1R to tell the cell to produce either Eumelanin or Pheomelanin when the MC1R is on, the cells make Eumelanin but when it is off, it makes Pheomelanin but for people with Redhead, they have a mutation which prevents their body from producing MC1R which means they only have pheomelanin so how does this concern pain. The protein that triggers the production of MC1R is also involve in pain as melanocytes produces POMC which has a lot to do with pain perception when it is broke down to its derivatives.
Talking about POMC derivative, MSH is one of its derivatives and it does a lot of job including turning Melanocyte to Eumelanin when it binds with MC1R but it also binds with pain receptors, increasing the perception of pain. Another derivative is Beta-endorphin which binds to opioids receptors reducing pain. These derivatives is why redheads experience a complicated relationship with pain. The melanocyte is responsible for this and not the melanin and less POMC means less MSH and less beta-endorphin. There are still a lot of research to be done on this as scientists are learning more as the day goes by.
Read More
- https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/study-finds-link
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1692342/
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and
- https://journals.lww.com/anesthesiology/fulltext/2005/03000/increased_sensitivity_to_thermal_pain_and_reduced.5.aspx
- https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/opioids/pain-scale/
- https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/health-wellness/health-encyclopedia
- https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22615-melanin
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459156
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6548228/
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/php.12837
- https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/gene/pomc/
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44254-023-00017-3
- https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/gene/mc1r/
- https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.abd1310
- https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/15286-anesthesia
Thanks for your contribution to the STEMsocial community. Feel free to join us on discord to get to know the rest of us!
Please consider delegating to the @stemsocial account (85% of the curation rewards are returned).
Thanks for including @stemsocial as a beneficiary, which gives you stronger support.