We routinely screen the heart before surgery. We don’t do the same for the brain. Yet surgery and anesthesia place enormous demand on the nervous system. For many people, the brain adapts and recovery is smooth. For others, that stress exposes vulnerabilities that were already present. When recovery is slow or incomplete, the issue isn’t usually that something went wrong during surgery. It’s that the nervous system didn’t have enough reserve before the stress ever happened. Inflammation, infecti