What exactly is the state of anesthesia? What is the difference between anesthesia and sleep? Today, take a look, into anesthesia. Michael Jackson died suddenly in 2009, how did he die strangely? The final investigation results is his personal doctor Murray without qualification for the use of anesthesia drugs illegally injected anesthesia drugs led to his death, the world was shocked! He was only 50 years old. People may ask: anesthesia is not just let a person sleep after a shot? How can they be asphyxiated? Here we should first clarify two different concepts, what is sleep and what is loss of consciousness under anesthesia. Sleep is a state of temporary cessation of sensory and motor activity due to the internal needs of the body, which can be awakened immediately by giving appropriate stimulation. General anesthesia is the process of using anesthetics to depress the central nervous system, causing the patient to lose consciousness and feel no pain. This type of anesthesia is often referred to as the “asleep state”, characterized by the disappearance of the patient’s consciousness, the muscles of the whole body relaxation, experience no pain. Do you understand the biggest difference? The biggest difference is the degree of inhibition of the brain. Sleep is like the standby state of a computer, which can be awakened by a certain intensity of stimulation. Anesthesia, on the other hand, is a deeper inhibition of the organism in order to meet the surgical operation, and there is no response, or low response, to strong stimuli such as surgical cuts and pulling of the internal organs, which is like the hibernation state of a computer. There may be some people will have doubts again, why asphyxiation occurs under anesthesia? Let’s do an experiment: lie down, the whole body is completely relaxed, and the tongue is also relaxed, is there a tendency for the tongue to fall back and cause whistling? Many people whistling is caused by tongue falling back. Tongue falling back can lead to a poor airway, and in severe cases, the airway can be blocked. If tongue thrust occurs during normal deep sleep, the human body will stimulate the brain to wake up a little bit to improve the condition of tongue thrust due to lack of oxygen, and then continue to enter deep sleep and repeat the previous process. When anesthetics inhibit the brain, the lack of oxygen to the brain stimulation can not wake up the human body, tongue fall can not be improved, the person will be suffocated due to lack of oxygen and die. At the same time, the vast majority of anesthesia painkillers have a whooping inhibition effect, even if the airway is open, it will weaken the whooping. Therefore, the most commonly used form of general anesthesia is tracheal intubation general anesthesia, which is characterized by the use of intravenous anesthetics or inhalation anesthetics to produce general anesthesia, and the need for tracheal intubation and mechanically assisted whistling during the operation. As an anesthesiologist who relieves patients’ pain and ensures surgical safety, it is our responsibility to work with surgeons to help patients overcome their illnesses. The first thing a patient says when he wakes up safely is “Is the surgery done? How did I fall asleep?” This sentence is a great affirmation of our work. With the continuous development of science, we also hope that someday we will be able to invent a magical anesthesia drug, which can be used by the patient to wake up, but the whole body does not hurt at all, and can be used to open the abdomen at will. At that time, we anesthesiologists can be pleased to lay off.