“How does anesthesia work on the body?”

General anesthetics alter signal processing in the brain to produce unconsciousness, analgesia, and muscle relaxation. Side effects of general anesthetics include postoperative drowsiness and nausea. Potential complications of having an operation relate more directly to the degree of patient disability, and to the complexity and invasiveness of the surgical procedure than to the anesthesia.

Hi, you have asked a question for which there are several answers because there are hundreds of medications with just as many mechanisms of how they work. It’s like making stew. There is not one way to make it, or one ingredient in stew. Ingredients vary, methods vary. Same thing with anesthesia, we don’t give the same anesthetic to someone having carpal tunnel release to gall bladder surgery. So the answer to your question is not simple as saying it is due to the blocking sodium channels in neurons, or completion for receptors of acetylcholine... etc.... The same with risks. Risks vary from technique of anesthesia, to type of surgery to types of comorbidities, to length of surgery, to position of patient for surgery, to types of medications taken by the patient, to urgency of the procedure to location of where on the body the procedure is performed..... so on and so forth.

Dr Ketch

No one has actually determined how general anesthetics work. There are theories, but each lacks complete validity. The major risks are to your heart, brain and lungs and include heart attacks, death, stroke, and breathing problems.

The exact mechanism of our anesthetic agents on the body which induce the anesthetic state is still currently unknown.