neuropathic pain

And that brings us [laughs] to the third category.

If you have chronic pain that doctors can't seem to explain, you need to listen closely.

In 2017, the International Association for the Study of Pain officially formalized a third term.

This was just in 2017.

It is nociplastic pain.

It looks at the bones and the cartilage and the ligaments and the discs, and it can't show the sensitivity setting of the software, and the software is the way your brain and spinal cord process sensation.

And by the way, just a little note here, all pain happens in the brain.

Pain doesn't happen in tissues at all.

So if you have a sharp stabbing pain behind your eye, the chance of that being more neck-related in a referral pattern is high with something we see all the time here, as opposed to the trigeminal nerve itself being the issue.

Okay, so the second thing I want to talk about here is what is true nerve pain and why it's rarely the whole story.

The nerve itself is just a piece of our anatomy that does need to be considered.

It does need to be something that we understand when a nerve is inflamed and irritated, what happens to it.

Nerves can also present with numbness and tingling if they're compressed to a To an extreme degree, you can present with neurological weakness and things like that.

And there's ways to flesh that out.

But the nerve pain itself is just indicating that the nerve is inflamed or irritated because something would need to be causing that inflammation.

So, I mean, a virus or a bacteria, sure, could cause inflammation around nerves, but the When we're talking about a specific presentation, say the right side of your neck and the occipital nerve being irritated and that pain traveling up and around your head, it's much more likely we're thinking about something mechanical.

Hi, I'm so happy to be here and I'm very excited to dive into our conversation.

Today, we're speaking with Christian Kirsten, CEO of Akigai, based in Oslo, Norway, working on treatments for neuropathic pain.

We'll talk more about this science later in the episode.

Christian, welcome to A Call to Lead.

Hello, Jetty.

Hi, Dave, and thank you for having me.

Now, Christian, you've been a medical doctor and researcher in oncology for most of your career until you and your co-founder Marta Cameron serendipitously found a solution for neuropathic pain in the clinic.

But I'd like you to take me back to the beginning of your life science career.