Great ideas that aren't mine

I constantly have these ideas about how nerves grow or about how to best manipulate them to grow. My latest one involves exercise. There has to be a reason why my nerves won't stop growing, and there is one thing that I do a lot of that most people with nerve damage do not: exercise. Then last week I read an article about how getting rats with nerve damage to exercise significantly reduced their pain levels. The researchers thought that it was likely do to a reduction in inflammatory mediators as a result of exercise. And I was all like, OMG! Maybe I am on to something, maybe the reduction in inflammatory mediators not only reduces pain but improves axon out growth!!

So then this week, I decided to pub med "exercise and nerve regeneration." As it turns out, I am not the first person to think of this, and there are a lot of journal articles published surrounding this idea. Granted, I did think of this entirely on my own, which I guess is a good start, but the world of neuroscientists has already beat me to it.

I would love to be able to in someway come up a novel idea on my own, to be the first one to think of something, to be the one that figures out how to make nerves grow. If I can do that, then maybe all this pain hasn't been for nothing. I don't believe everything happens for a reason, because there is no reason a two year old needs to get cancer or that I need to have chronic pain. I do believe that you can take any situation, even awful ones, and make something good out of it.

I'll keep thinking, and maybe someday I will figure it out.