What is Pain?
Pain can be a sign that the body is damaged by illness or accident. However, pain can also arise without such damage can be proven.
Recent scientific studies has shown that there are different types of pain, i.e. tissue pain (nociceptive pain), neuralgia (neurogenic pain) and pain without any signs of damage. This has great significance when choosing an effective treatment because the different types of pain do not require the same treatment.
Tissue pain
This type of pain arises in the case of damage to skin, muscle, joints, bones and inner organs. An example could be burning of the skin, a cut on the finger, a sprained ankle or a fractured bone. However, our inner organs – intestines, stomach, the heart – can also be damaged and thereby cause pain. Typical examples are a coronary thrombosis where a part of the heart is destroyed, volvulus where a part of the intestine can be in danger or cancer.
Neuralgia
In the cases where it is our nervous tissue (nerve fibres, spinal cord or the brain itself) that is damages, another kind of pain arises – neuralgia. Typical examples are a cerebral thrombosis (where the brain is damaged), diabetes (where the nerve fibres are damaged) or cancer that grows in the spinal cord (where the spinal cord is damaged).
Pain without signs of damage
However, sometimes pain arises where we are unable to detect that the body has been damaged. The fact that we are unable to prove any damage however does not mean that the pain is non-existent. Earlier on, people with this kind of pain was thought to be mentally ill or hypochondriacs – but more recent research has lead to a more nuanced perception. Typical examples are whiplash injuries, back pains and headache.