238: ANÆSTHESIA

The myth

People with red hair need higher doses of anæsthetics than others, because they carry a mutant gene, MC1R, which makes them resistant to general anæsthesia, and possibly to local anæsthetics too.

The “truth”

Many beliefs about redheads, I suspect, are based on a sense of natural justice: they must pay for their overwhelming gorgeousness by means of extra suffering. This particular story is, apparently, widely believed even by members of the medical profession. It seems to be chiefly based on a 2004 study of just 20 patients; however, in 2013, the same research team found that “anecdotal impressions” concerning redheads and anæsthetic were “unsubstantiated”. Much larger studies have arrived at the same conclusion, that there is “no evidence that a patient’s natural hair colour meaningfully affects anæsthetic requirement”. For now, that’s where the consensus lies. Perhaps the strangest truth about general anæsthetic is that nobody knows how it works. It’s been around for a century and a half, it’s enormously successful and is used thousands of times a day, but it remains one of medicine’s greatest mysteries. Its effect is thought to be closer to coma than to sleep, and to involve interference in communication between brain cells. And by the way, did you know that the second stage of anæsthesia is the “excitement stage “, characterised by “delirious behaviour”?

Sources

https://gingerparrot.co.uk/2018/08/the-never-ending-debate-redheadsand-anaesthesia/; https://www.everydayhealth.com/news/surprisingfacts-about-anesthesia/; www.technology.org/2018/01/11/how-doesgeneral-anaesthesia-work-no-one-knows-but-now-we-are-close-to-thetruth/; www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265592.php

Disclaimer

It’s possible that a practising anæsthetist would have a clearer idea than a magazine columnist would of the truth of this matter. Therefore, those wishing to defend the Painful Ginger Hypothesis are invited to write in to the letters page, whilst counting slowly to 10.