Acute pain is a call to action. It brings problems to our attention so we can address them before it becomes an emergency. When you touch a hot stove the pain causes you to withdraw your hand before it gets seriously burned. A minor infection causes pain so we will take care for it before it becomes life threatening. The pain and nausea from a swollen appendix causes us to see the doctor before it bursts. It should be no surprise that people who cannot feel pain often die at an early age from an easily treatable problem because they lack this early warning system. Acute pain, therefore, could be considered good pain because it serves a purpose.
Chronic pain is pain which persists after you have healed. Maybe a back injury pinched the sciatic nerve, causing the nerve to scar resulting in chronic back and leg pain. A badly fractured leg heals with the help of pins and rods, but quite often pain continues to be present. The pain one experiences in both cases does not serve a purpose, because the body has healed. The brain does not need a constant reminder that something is not right because there is nothing more to be done. Chronic pain could be considered bad pain because it is unpleasant and serves no useful purpose.
Pain can be further broken down into hurt and harm. “Hurt” is pain which signals the body is being stressed but not damaged. The burning we feel in our muscles while lifting heavy weights may be uncomfortable, but it will help our muscles get stronger. “Harm” is pain which signals damage may be done if we continue or it has already occurred.
People who have chronic pain conditions sometimes have a hard time telling when they need to push through the pain or back off. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you distinguish between ‘hurt’ and ‘harm.’
- Is my pain getting worse, the more I do it? If you have increasingly sharp and localized pain the more you do, stop before it gets too bad. If it goes away in a few hours, no harm no foul.
- Did the pain increases last for more than a few hours after I stopped? Pain that lingers is often a sign you overdid it, especially if you have more joint stiffness and pain the next day.
- Did it spread to a larger area? Pain that spreads to a larger area, especially if you are not using that area, is a sign you need to stop. We do not want the back pain to spread into the leg or the neck pain to spread into the arm.
Does it cause more joint stiffness and pain the next morning? Morning stiffness and pain is a hallmark of arthritic or inflamed joints. If you have increased morning stiffness and pain to the point it is harder to do things the day after doing something, you overdid something in the past few days.