I find your lack of pictures disturbing.
Posted on 12/11/2005 2:03:17 PM PST by paulat
Stoic Redheads
By AMY SULLIVAN Published: December 11, 2005
Redheads have long been portrayed in literature and art as strong-willed and fiery. Now there may be a scientific explanation for these traits. The key, according to researchers at McGill University in Montreal, is a gene that is linked both to red hair coloring and to higher levels of pain tolerance. It has been known since the mid-1990's that mutations of the MC1R gene are responsible for hair color - and fair skin and freckles - in about 70 percent of redheads. But when Jeffrey S. Mogil and his colleagues at McGill set out to find a genetic link to pain inhibition, MC1R wasn't at the top of their list of targets. "We normally only get excited about genes in the brain when it comes to pain," he says. "This is in the skin." There was, however, a little-noticed paper that said MC1R was in fact expressed in the brain. It was enough of a clue to go on.
So, earlier this year, Mogil ran some mice through a battery of pain tests, using mice with the red-hair gene as his test group. (A collaborator in the Netherlands ran the same study with humans, giving them electrical shocks to the leg.) When animals and humans experience pain, their brains release natural opiates similar to morphine. In most cases, however, the MC1R gene produces a protein that interferes with the efficacy of those substances as well as of artificial painkillers. What Mogil found is that the variant of MC1R that causes red hair also appears to allow these opiates to work unimpeded. As a result, redheads can withstand up to 25 percent more pain than their blond and brunet peers do before saying "stop."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
From my previous post.
In my experience they can inflict at least 25% more pain than brunettes and blondes.
Celts?
My Titian-haired wife is proof of this: she is still married to me in spite of the pain I cause....
Explains the fightin' Irish...
My husband and children would tell you they (redheads) inflict more than 25% more pain . . .
Interesting.
Maybe she gets hers from a bottle . . .
That's exactly what I was going to write when I saw the headline. Seem's I have always ended up with redheads!
Maybe that's why hubby and I both get along. We both have red hair and get mad at the same things
I know how you love your red heads.
They say "Blondes have more fun," but in my experience, it's much more exciting to be with a redhead.... Life is never predictable, that's for sure! Ha ha.
You meant 52%, I believe.
This might explain why redheads are so wild in the sack!!!
Oh.
MoDO inflicts MUCH MORE than her share of the 25% more pain......
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