Are redheads more sensitive to cold?

If you’re a redhead who’s first to grab something warm and cosy, and last to give up the hot-water bottle, you might have wondered whether it’s a ginger thing. After all, redheads have long been said to feel pain differently and to need more anaesthetic. And the thought behind this is that it’s all linked together. So do redheads feel the cold more?

The honest answer: it’s complicated, and a lot less certain than the internet would have you believe. Here’s what we know.

The study that started it

Much of the talk about how redheads feel thermal pain traces back to a 2005 study published in the journal Anesthesiology by researchers at the University of Louisville. They tested 60 women (30 redheads and 30 with dark hair) and found the red-haired women were more sensitive to painfully cold and painfully hot stimuli on their skin. A local anaesthetic injected under the skin also worked less well for the redheads. Those figures are summarised in a 2024 review in the Journal of Personalized Medicine.

But let’s pay attention to something on the wording here. Notice: painful cold. The study tested pain thresholds, not whether redheads feel chilly on a winter’s day.

What the lead researcher says

Dr Daniel Sessler, who led that research, has been clear about its limits. In a 2026 interview, he explained that the study doesn’t show redheads cope worse with heat. Whether the MC1R gene affects how the body regulates its temperature during exercise “is unknown”, he said, because it has never been tested.

Do redheads feel more or less pain?

With this complicated topic, it seems the research disagrees. Aside from the above studies, others have found something quite different. Here’s a summary:

1. Some redheads get more pain relief: also summarised in the 2024 review, are findings that people with MC1R variants got more pain relief from certain opioid painkillers and had higher pain tolerance in some tests.
2. Mice with red fur had higher pain thresholds: a 2021 study, described by the US National Institutes of Health, found red-haired mice were less sensitive to pain, thanks to a shift in their body’s natural opioid signalling. But we’re talking about mice here.
3. An at-home study found a difference only in women: as reported by McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, a huge, 2021 study of more than 25,000 people found red-haired women reported more pain sensitivity than women with other hair colours. The study included a test where around 6,800 people held a hand in cold water. Red-haired men showed no difference. This data were self-reported and collected at home, so not in a specific, set environment.
4. Even anaesthesia isn’t settled: the recent Forbes explainer on this topic notes that study from 2015 conducted on hundreds of self-identified redheads found no meaningful difference in how much anaesthetic they needed, and calls the overall evidence “mixed”.

When it comes to redheads and pain, as McGills says, “the clinical evidence falls short”, mostly because studies are small and people are rarely genetically tested.

So…do redheads feel the cold more?

Here’s where things stand:

• There’s some evidence that redheads, especially red-haired women, may find painful cold more painful.
• There’s no good evidence that redheads feel everyday cold more, lose heat faster or are more likely to get too cold.

So, it could just be the draughty office causing your chills. But if you’re a redhead who loves winter (we’ve got 10 reasons why you should), wrap up and enjoy it, because the science says the cold isn’t out to get you any more than anyone else.

Last updated on October 14, 2026