Understanding Pain

Pain is the sensation of discomfort in the body that can vary from mild to moderate depending upon its cause. Pain can be sharp, trobing, steady-and-continous, aching, tender, sore and pinching. When any body part or system is affected by an injurty or disease, the unpleasant resulting feeling felt by brain thru nerve simulation is pain.

What is Pain?

Pain is the sensation of discomfort in the body that can vary from mild to moderate depending upon its cause. This unpleasant sensation occurs when something hurts the nerves and affects the system. It can be because of any ailment or disease or injury.

It is hard to explain, how it feels when it pains as it can only be felt but cannot be seen. This complex condition (Pain) may toll on a person to suffer psychologically (mentally, and emotionally) and pysically.

Intensity of pain is measued on either a visual scale (such as simley or sad face) or a numberal scale (from 1 to 10).


Types of Pain

There are many types and sub-types of pain. Primary pain categories are:

  • Acute pain
  • Chronic pain
  • Neuropatic pain
  • Nociceptive pain
  • Radicular pain

Acute pain is the pain that is mild and lasts for a day, week, or month. But when the pain becomes worse and lasts for more than 3 months that becomes chronic pain. Acute pain is sharp in nature but goes away easily with the passage of time. Whereas any major injury, surgery, arthritis etc can be the cause of chronic pain that lasts long as it takes time to heal. Neuropatic pain is caused by nerve irritations resulting from either direct injury or that happens due to alignement or other conditions. Nociceptive pain on the other hand is typically caused due to tissue injury or damage. Radicular pain is typically caused due to sensory root or irritation of spinal nerves. An example of radicualr pain is sciatica nerve pain.


Muscular pain/sprains

The most common pain experienced by the majority of people is muscular pain. It creates discomfort in the body because of overuse while a sprain can be experienced because of the injury in the muscle. The other causes of it might include Influenza or diseases like hypothyroidism and fibromyalgia.


Joint Pain

Joints are the bridges between the two bones. The discomfort that results in stiffness, swelling, aching in the joints is commonly experienced by millions of people due to various factors like growing age, obesity, heredity or injury. It can be acute or chronic depending upon the nature of the cause.


Neurotic pain

Neurotic or neuropathic pain is a severe pain that is caused by pressure or malfunctioning or damage to nerves at or around the affected area. These nerves send signals to the brain. The affected area is often numb or feels a burning sensation on touching.


Tendon pain

Tendon is the tissue that connects muscle to the bone. When these tissues are overused and get less supply of blood so, they take time to heal and result in pain in the affected area. It is basically observed at the front part of the knee when someone feels difficulty straightening the leg.