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In: Biology
The short answer of how the body can endure more pain is because many of the powerful medicines/painkillers will stop breathing and lower blood pressure to possibly dangerous levels.
Once on a ventilator (life support) the breathing is controlled and additional drugs and fluids can be given to raise the blood pressure.
What medications are used varies by institution and reason/goals of care.
It makes your brain not process much of anything at all. A coma is a deep state of unconsciousness. Have you ever undergone general anesthesia for surgery? It’s a similar process. The anesthetic agent essentially shuts down most of your brain so it can’t even process pain, except with an induced coma, you’re in a much deeper state of unconsciousness.
I think it’s important to clarify some definitions here. Pain is a higher order function of the brain, one that requires you to be conscious. If you’re not conscious, there is no pain. The registration of stimuli, including the ones that cause pain, is a function of the peripheral nervous system. This does not require you to be conscious, as it’s a fairly ‘dumb’ process – something happens, a nerve fires. It’s the registration of these signals where the profit lies. If you can block the nerve at some point before it reaches the brain, there is no signal, so there is no pain. (Think local aneasthetics, e.g. lidocaine during dental procedures.) There is still a signal transmitted by nerve cells at the site, it’s just never relayed to the brain, so you feel nothing. Alternatively, you could block the brain from converting these signals to the sensation of pain, by, for example, inducing sleep or a coma. If you’re not awake, you’re not feeling anything, so also no pain. Similar to the previous scenario, the signal is still there, it’s just not ‘landing’. However, it is important to note that the sensation of pain is your brain informing you there is something very wrong. Pain is there to be treated, not ignored.
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