About Pain
Pain is a normal human experience, especially when you’ve had an acute injury or medical condition. It is the brain's way of identifying a threat to your well-being, and making you act to do something about it.
However, once the acute problem has passed and healing has occurred (in most cases after about three months) your doctor may diagnose you as having persistent pain. This can be a confusing and frustrating diagnosis, and you may have many questions.
It's important to know that features in X-rays and scans may not correspond with pain levels. For example, one person could have a knee X-ray showing mild arthritis and be in lots of pain. Someone else could have a very damaged looking knee but no pain at all.
The brain and the nerves inside the spinal cord make up the central nervous system, the nerves that supply the skin, joints and bones are called the peripheral nerves. The nerves connect with each other carrying messages from the body to the brain, this includes signals that tell the brain there's a threat (or potential threat) to an area of the body and for the person to do something about it.
The brain acts like a control centre working out how serious the source of the problem is and what strength the pain response should be. Sometimes the brain’s interpretation of these signals isn't always accurate.
We expect pain to settle down with time but sometimes the brain continues to send out pain signals. This fact isn't always easy to understand and sometimes people feel that they're being told the pain is in their ‘head’ and 'not real'. These signals can be hard to stop, are often intense and at times seem to come on for no obvious reason.
It isn't possible to tell in advance whose pain will become persistent, however we know that people are more likely to develop persistent pain during or after times of stress or unhappiness.
There are some good resources about pain and chronic pain here:
However, once the acute problem has passed and healing has occurred (in most cases after about three months) your doctor may diagnose you as having persistent pain. This can be a confusing and frustrating diagnosis, and you may have many questions.
It's important to know that features in X-rays and scans may not correspond with pain levels. For example, one person could have a knee X-ray showing mild arthritis and be in lots of pain. Someone else could have a very damaged looking knee but no pain at all.
The brain and the nerves inside the spinal cord make up the central nervous system, the nerves that supply the skin, joints and bones are called the peripheral nerves. The nerves connect with each other carrying messages from the body to the brain, this includes signals that tell the brain there's a threat (or potential threat) to an area of the body and for the person to do something about it.
The brain acts like a control centre working out how serious the source of the problem is and what strength the pain response should be. Sometimes the brain’s interpretation of these signals isn't always accurate.
We expect pain to settle down with time but sometimes the brain continues to send out pain signals. This fact isn't always easy to understand and sometimes people feel that they're being told the pain is in their ‘head’ and 'not real'. These signals can be hard to stop, are often intense and at times seem to come on for no obvious reason.
It isn't possible to tell in advance whose pain will become persistent, however we know that people are more likely to develop persistent pain during or after times of stress or unhappiness.
There are some good resources about pain and chronic pain here:
The Pain Toolkit: a self-help guide written by a person with experience of chronic pain, www.paintoolkit.org
A great pain science resource book for patients: www.greglehman.ca/pain-science-workbooks