What is pain?
Pain is usually a symptom of an illness or a sign that something is wrong within the body. It is part of the body’s alarm system, signaling that you need to be aware of something.
Pain is unpleasant, but this varies from being a mild discomfort to agony. It is designed to get your attention and persuade you to take action, so pain plays an important protective role in your preservation.
Physical pain is felt as a result of nerve stimulation, but emotional factors, mood and beliefs will also have an impact on the way that pain is felt, so pain does not always have to come from tissue damage which can easily be seen.
Pain which is caused by damage to nerve tissue is called neuropathic pain. This is usually demonstrated by a burning, crawling or stabbing type of sensation.
Pain caused by factors outside the nervous system, like an injury or disease is called nociceptive pain. It generally feels more like an ongoing dull ache or pressure as opposed to the sharper neuropathic pain.
What is chronic pain?
The International Association for the Study of Pain states,
“Chronic pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.”
Chronic pain is different from acute pain, because it is ongoing over an extended period instead of being short term. Chronic pain is often resistant to treatment and medication. Although it is often experienced after a traumatic injury, it can also be present where there was no injury or when the organic effects of the injury would normally have been expected to have resolved.
A chronic pain sufferers body keeps sending out messages of pain, but these signals have no useful purpose.
Chronic pain is a disease itself – it is not a symptom of something else. There are a number of chronic pain conditions, including chronic fatigue syndrome, endometriosis, fibromyalgia, inflammatory bowel disease and interstitial cystitis. It is unclear whether or not these condition of chronic pain share a common cause.
