Different Types of Pain, Explained
Acute or chronic? Nerve or gut pain? Ways to relieve pain may vary.
By Lisa Esposito, Staff Writer Aug. 31, 2018, at 12:44 p.m.
What kind of pain do you have? Sorting out different types of pain can be helpful when considering how to relieve it. How long pain lasts, where it arises and how it feels are some of the ways pain is classified. Acute pain and chronic pain are the two major pain "buckets." Chronic pain, which is more complex, includes several categories involving a variety of causes and treatments. Here are some of the ways that people may experience pain.
Acute pain
Acute pain actually has some positive aspects. It's short-term by definition – resolved within 30 days but often much sooner – and it tends to respond well to treatment. Anything from everyday aches and pains to intense pain following a dental extraction or surgical procedure are examples of acute pain. "That's the sort of pain people probably have the most experience with, and it's the pain our medicines work best for," says Dr. Tonya Palermo, a professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at University of Washington School of Medicine and a researcher in pediatric chronic pain at Seattle Children's Hospital. Compared to chronic pain, acute pain is a simpler process, she says: "You have an injury, you have local inflammation and then an analgesic relieves it."
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