Red haired people do not feel more pain: doctors

People with red hair do not feel more pain or bleed more after operations, despite doctors' fears that they do, it has emerged.

Doctors treat red heads with trepidation, an article in the British Medical Journal said, because of their reputation for complications.

But surgeon Jonathan Barry from Morriston Hospital in Swansea and colleagues checked the evidence for such worries and found it was flimsy at best.

He wrote in the BMJ: "Red haired patients are traditionally regarded with a degree of trepidation by surgeons and anaesthetists alike due to a reputation for excessive bleeding, reduced pain threshold and a propensity to develop hernias."

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