Oh. You’re a redhead.

Being a redhead comes with its share of quirks, such as:

  • We require more anesthesia than non-redheads. (I can vouch for this. I’ve never had a dentist be able to fully numb my mouth, which has a lot to do with my dental work phobia.)
  • We produce our own vitamin D. This one makes sense since our lack of melanin means we can’t get as much vitamin D from sunlight.
  • Redheads don’t go gray; we go blonde and then go white. I’m well into the blonde spectrum now. I’ve heard it said that redheads don’t go salt and pepper, we go cinnamon and sugar. I love this!
Just call me quirky!

I’ve stumbled across a few other traits over the years:

  • When I gave birth to our oldest son, another redhead had given birth a couple of hours earlier, The other redhead had hemorrhaged and the nurses watched me like a hawk because apparently we bleed more than non-redheads.
  • When I had my wisdom teeth removed, the oral surgeon said that redheads bleed worse and swell worse than non-redheads. I did fine. When my oldest son (also a redhead) had his wisdom teeth removed, the poor guy had so much swelling, he couldn’t eat solid food for a week.
  • I had an endoscopy a couple of years ago and was given Robinul to dry up the secretions in the mouth and throat before the procedure. The nurse warned me that it would cause my heart to race for a few minutes but it shouldn’t last more than five or ten minutes. Hahahahaha! An hour later I was still experiencing periods of a racing heart. It was like have an hour-long anxiety attack; I was not having fun. The nurses finally called the anesthesiologist who came in, looked at me and said “Oh. You’re a redhead.” Lucky me! On that note, it will be a cold day in hell before I let anyone give me Robinul again.
  • The most recent instance came up last November. I had a bone density scan which showed osteoporosis in my spine and osteopenia (precursor to osteoporosis) in my hips. During my appointment with my general practitioner to discuss treatment I told him that I have been taking calcium supplements for thirty years; my now-retired gynecologist had me start taking calcium because he said that my being a “tall, slim, Caucasian female” made me the textbook description of someone who would develop osteoporosis. My GP nodded and said, “Also, your red hair.” Wait, what? I said “Seriously? That’s another one of the weird redhead traits?” He nodded. “Yes. Red hair/Norse ancestry make you more likely to develop osteoporosis.” Whoo hoo! He also said that without my calcium regimen, I probably would have developed serious problems five to ten years ago. So now, I have added once-a-month Boniva to my medication regimen and will have follow-up bone density scan in a year.

Are there any “quirky” traits associated with being blond or brunette?

11 thoughts on “Oh. You’re a redhead.”

  1. I was born a redhead but my hair turned blonde by year one. I don’t know if that means I started doing the redhead version of graying early or not. As a blonde I know a dentist told me that I’ll never have bright white teeth, they’ll be more cream-colored no matter what I do to whiten them.

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  4. That was interesting about redhead traits Linda and here I thought you redheads only had fair skin (yours is pretty, like alabaster) and freckles (I don’t see any on your face). I have always been the hair color known as “dirty blonde” and I’m not particularly fair, but when I got hard contact lenses in 1974, my contact lens practitioner said “well good luck because people with your hair color rarely tolerate contact lenses.” Soft lens either weren’t available or he didn’t fit them … this was 51 years ago after all, but I never any of those issues at all. I was so vain back then that I would have tolerated them anyway. I continued to wear hard lenses (Boston Gas Permeable) until working from home in 2011 whereupon I got lazy and began wearing glasses.

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    • I used to have freckles on my nose, but they faded over time. I wore hard contact lenses for many years. When I first started wearing them, I lived the life of a vampire and kept curtains closed all day. Apparently, lighter colored eyes are more sun sensitive, and the contacts just made it worse. I developed dry eyes when I was pregnant with my youngest son and went back to glasses a few years later.

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