Dr. Alopi (Alopi Patel)

Fight or flight, right?

So you're go, go, going.

Anesthesia essentially relaxes the body.

So it can help decrease the heart rate.

It can help decrease the blood pressure and create a relaxation in the brain as well.

So when you're awake, your brain waves are going fast, right?

So they're just kind of go, go, going at a higher speed.

Yeah.

So the waves are just going super fast.

And then when you get anesthesia, IV or inhaled anesthesia, the brain waves come down.

They're slower and they're more relaxed.

And it just kind of creates the zen sort of mode for the brain or like an airplane mode, right, where things are just kind of low energy and able to be relaxed.

And during that induced coma or controlled coma phase,

significant surgical incisions or surgical stimulus can be done without the brain and the body feeling it.

Kind of, yeah.

It doesn't cut off communication necessarily.

That would be something like a local anesthetic, right?

So a local anesthetic does cut off communication where it just doesn't allow that pain signaling to go through.

But an anesthetic like an IV anesthetic or an inhaled anesthetic just kind of relaxes it so you don't really have that stimulation as much.

And it creates this low energy mode, essentially that airplane mode where...