Why do we not feel pain under general anesthesia? Is it the same for regular sleep?

Question

I’m curious what mechanism is at work here.

Edit: Thanks for the responses. I get it now. Obviously I am still enjoying the discussion RE: the finer points like memory, etc.

In: Biology

Answer 1

There’s a few interesting answers here, not all correct.

The real answer is that you do actually feel pain… you’re just not conscious. The inability to wake up is what seperates sleep from unconsciousness. You can’t wake up because of the drugs. 

We can actually typically tell when an unconscious person is recieving painful stimuli due to spikes in heart rate, blood pressure etc.

To counteract this, general anaesthesia typically includes strong intravenous pain killers, or some other form of “blocking” pain – such as a nerve block.