Types of Pain

Nociceptive pain arises from any injury to tissues, reported to the brain by the nervous system. Everyone is familiar with this type of pain causes by bruises, burn, fractures or inflammatory arthritis. Nociceptors are the nerves which sense and responds to parts of body which suffer from damage. This type of pain is often well localized, constant and with throbbing or aching quality. Nociceptive pain is usually time- limited means when tissue damage heals, the pain typically resolves.

Neuropathic pain arises from damage to the nervous system itself, central or peripheral, either from disease, injury, or pressure. The simplest neuropathies are mechanical insults, like hitting your funny bone or sciatica. It’s often stabbing, electrical, or burning, but nearly any quality of pain is possible. Neuropathic pain is often chronic due to poor healing of nerves. Neuropathic pain responds poorly to opioids. Examples include Post-herpetic (shingles) Neuralgia, peripheral neuropathy, carpal tunnel syndrome, chemotherapy induced neuropathy, phantom limb pain.

Other type of Pain arises from some Neurological dysfunction, where we don’t really have good explanation of cause by medical science. Typical examples of such type of pain is Fibromyalgia, where there is multisystem failure causing widespread body pain. Other examples are Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, Non-specific Chronic low-back pain, Irritable bowel syndrome or other functional visceral pain.