Chronic Pain: Pain That Doesn’t Stop or Go Away

Chronic pain is pain that is ongoing and does not stop for six months. Even when the injuries or illness/condition that caused the pain are healed or go away the pain stays. This can go on for weeks, months, and even years. Acute pain comes on rapidly and can be traced to a direct cause. Chronic pain can linger and can be quite a challenge in diagnosing the root cause. This is a situation for many individuals, as there is pain present, but they can’t figure out where it is coming from. Chronic pain is considered a disease or condition. Normally pain is a symptom that is presenting as a warning that something is wrong with the body. When the pain becomes chronic it is no longer a warning of something wrong with the body. It is the ailment. Another definition is pain that’s present even without a visible injury or disease that is causing it. Chronic pain can be difficult to define accurately because it can take on so many forms. Therefore, determining the type of pain is the objective toward finding a treatment that will help deal with whatever form of chronic pain it is.  

Chronic Pain Types

Chronic pain is placed into two categories.

These categories help physicians develop individually customized treatments because everyone and their pain type is unique and needs to be approached and treated uniquely. General forms of chronic pain are:

Neuropathic pain

This is pain caused by damage to or malfunction of the nerves.

Nociceptive pain

Nociceptors are receptors in the nervous system that are activated when an injury occurs. If there is no injury from outside of the nervous system, the nociceptors do not get activated. Therefore, nociceptive pain is caused by an injury to an area of the body that are not the nerves. With chronic pain, the nociceptors are still sending/relaying pain messages after the injury that created the pain has healed.  

Neuropathic Pain

The peripheral nervous system includes all the nerves going to and from the spinal cord. These nerves send pain signals to the brain. If they get injured, neuropathic pain can develop. This is pain caused by injury to these nerves. The term peripheral neuropathy is another way of saying neuropathic pain. This comes from damage to the peripheral nervous system. Central nervous system injury/damage can also trigger neuropathic pain. Chronic neuropathic pain can be extremely challenging to treat because of the difficulty of finding where and how the nerves are damaged/injured.  

Nociceptive Pain

Nociceptive pain is caused by an injury or disease to an area of the body. It’s an injury or disease that stimulates the nociceptors. There are various types of chronic nociceptive pain:

Somatic pain

Somatic pain comes from an injury/s that happen to the outer body like the:

• Skin
• Muscles
• Ligaments
• Tendons
• Joints
• Bones

Somatic pain can usually be easier to diagnose as the pain can be sharp or throbbing depending on what part of the body is injured. Bone pain is somatic pain, as the bones can ache. If the bones are weakened from other condition/s like cancer or osteoporosis, there can be a very achy and very intense dull pain. Bone pain can also be acute. For example, a bone break is acute pain. When the bone heals but there is still throbbing pain that could be constant or comes and goes could be considered chronic bone pain.    

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