Well, I have seen this referred to anecdotally, but now there is data and the official imprimatur of a New York Times story.
Redheads require about 20% more general anesthesia to knock them out. I have always viewed this as all the evidence we need that my kind (which includes my sister, my mother, and some of my dearest friends – two minority groups wildly overrepresented in my close friends are redheads and lefties) are just a little more feisty than the rest of the world.
Currently 4% of the world’s people carry the gene for red hair, which was only discovered in the 1990s (what??? not a priority, people of science? how can this be?). I’ve heard about this frankly terrifying claim that redheads will be extinct by 2100, but I cannot reconcile the tenacious, hard-to-knock-out (is it any surprise that I sometimes need elephant tranquilizer style drugs to help me sleep?) reality of redheads I know with genetic extinction. No sirree.
And MMG, about to turn one, I have great hopes that you will carry the flag into the next generation … no pressure, babe, but the Sun In is coming out for Grace if your hair doesn’t bloom into redness!