Fascinating article about how redheads feel pain differently than other people. It’s because we’re mutant freaks.
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Check Your Premises 
Haha. Did you see this?
http://sfist.com/2012/01/26/anti-redhead_sentiment_mars_macworl.php
I didn’t see the “South Park” episode about “Kick a Ginger Day,” but apparently some people are still mad about it.
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That is hilarious. I do remember the South Park episode. Seems to me the term “ginger” is pretty new — at least I’d not started hearing it until just a couple of years ago.
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I think it’s a hipster term: my son’s friends were using it last year in reference to another friend who had carrot-orange hair (which I thought was adorable, btw). I hope it’s not considered derogatory!
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Ginger for readheads is a pretty old term – and it is used for orange cats in England a lot. I think it made a comeback recently because of the South Park and ‘Gingers have no Souls’ joke/meme.
I’ve run into it a lot because my football team, the Cincy Bengals, just got a rookie QB who is a redhead -and the teams colors include orange too – so it has been a recurring joke for about the last 8 months for me.
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I guess it’s okay… better than “carrot-top” for sure! I’m more of an auburn-red with hazel eyes, not so fiery orange with the blue eyes.
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Hm. I always have trouble with the novocaine wearing off mid procedure at the dentist. It goes numb fast, and comes back fast. Not a redhead, though.
I still am sceptical of anecdotal ‘evidence’ like this – especially evidence like ‘feels more pain, unless its feeling less pain’ . And the red head gives you an instant marker for drawing a conclusion, just like the full moon stories at hospitals.
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If the professionals all believe it, there must be *something* to it. There probably just haven’t been enough good studies. But you make a good point: how much of that is imagined / personal testimonial?
I’ll tell you what: when I had to endure a tooth drilling without enough (felt like none) Novocaine, and the dentist got mad at me for waving at him, then just left without a word, it sure didn’t feel like my imagination.
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And that’s a dentist who ought to lose his license. Novocaine makes me physically sick, so I have to ask for a substitute. Yet I had one dentist who blew me off and used the stuff, thinking I wouldn’t know the difference, “because it’s all in your head.” I ended up vomiting all over his chair and floor. I hope he had to clean it up by himself, since his assistant had gone home for the day.
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Well, just don’t ever go to Western Dental, that’s all I can say. After waiting for him to come back, with a hole in my tooth, nerves exposed, every inhale an icepick, for 45 minutes, I spotted (upside down) the finance guy walk by. I flagged him down, and we got another dentist to finish the filling. First guy went to lunch. Turns out, I then had two different formulas of resin in the same hole, making it structurally unstable, so 8 years later, the entire molar broke while chewing a piece of sushi, of all things.
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Once I had a cavity on both sides and the dentist thought it would be a good idea to only numb one side so I would not bite my tongue. Then he started with the un-numbed side.
That didn’t last long.
Mythbusters did a show on Gingers and pain tolerance – supposedly in that myth they felt more pain. They ended up having more tolerance (the stimulus was a hand in an ice bath). Of course, that test was flawed as well by the subjects knowing what the test was about. If you challenge group X can’t do Y, odds are X will show improved results just because you called them out.
The proper thing would be to tell the gingers that studies showed they had less, and non-gingers that gingers had MORE pain tolerance.
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It depends on the type of pain, and type of painkiller. Ibuprofin works MUCH better for me than acetaminophen. I have been knocked out, general anesthesia, once for the removal of an infected wisdom tooth. It started hurting on Friday evening (of course). I sucked on ice cream all weekend, and on Monday I was only able to secure an appointment for the next day. By Tuesday morning, the dentist looked at my tooth for two seconds and referred me to an oral surgeon. I got there that afternoon. Still, by then I was in so much pain I was in tears. Not preferring to deal with hysterical people, we both agreed to knock me out.
They got me on an IV and told me to count down from 100. I got to 98. Ten seconds later, they were shaking me awake, telling me it was all over, despite my trying to tell them they hadn’t started yet. It’s SO creepy to lose time like that. Even when sleeping, we have some sense of time passing.
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