As a neurologist it pains me to see the people that walk into my clinic everyday with these debilitating nerve issues.
The burning pain, the numbness, the sensitivity, the tingling.
I always understood their pain, my mom went through the same thing.
She would always tell me about her symptoms, and it broke my heart that I was never able to help her.
It's why I've always tried my best to help them as much as possible with other support tools, because I know what they're going through each day.
And seeing how some of my colleagues just wrote it off, and gave them a prescription for some drug that just masked the damage, without even trying to help them manage their pain further.
It always made me angry, because I just couldn’t believe that this condition was as untreatable as most doctors thought, and that the only option for my patients was just lifestyle changes, gabapentin, or exercise, and that there was nothing we could do about the actualy nerve damage itself.
It's why I've been extensively researching the condition for some time, looking at the mechanisms behind the underlying damage.
And that's when I realised something, the underlying nerves do have the capacity to heal themselves, if given the chance, and the right conditions.