Types of Chronic Pain
Diseases
- Pelvic pain in men
- Dysmenorrhea
- Interstitial cystitis (pain in the bladder)
- Vulvodynia or pudendal neuralgia
- Facet Arthropathy
- Osteoarthritis
- Cervical (neck) sprain
- Degenerative Disc Disease
- Sacroiliac pain
- Sciatica (sciatic neuralgia)
- Spinal stenosis
- Piriformis Syndrome
- Cluster Headaches
- Cervicogenic Headache
- Tension Headache
- Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ)
- Migraine
- Neuropathic pain
- Painful Diabetic Neuropathy
- Facial neuralgia and atypical facial pain
- Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
- Shingles and post-herpetic neuralgia
- Fibromyalgia or generalized pain
- Myofascial Pain Syndrome
- Central Sensitisation/opioids
- Diseases with pain as the primary symptom
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic encephalomyelitis
Nociceptive Pain
Nociceptive pain is the most common type of chronic pain. It’s the type of pain that you feel when your nerves send messages to your brain from irritated or injured tissue. It may be caused by pressure, extremely warm or cold temperature, or by chemical signals sent by your body tissues in response to an injury like joint damaged by arthritis or by muscle pain caused by chronic tension.
Neuropathic Pain
Another type of chronic pain is neuropathic pain. However, this type of pain is not caused by nerve endings transmitting messages from injured or irritated tissue to the brain. Neuropathic pain is caused by damage to a specific nerve or to the nervous system. Damaged nerves send abnormal pain messages to the brain.
Neuropathic pain is difficult to diagnose since there is usually no sign of a disease. The problem comes from the nerve ending itself or from the brain. This type of pain is also much more difficult to treat than nociceptive pain. For example, neuropathic pain may be felt as a burning sensation caused by shingles (an infection that affects nerve endings) or phantom pain (pain that is felt from a body part that is no longer there, that has been amputated).
Some people living with chronic pain may feel both nociceptive and neuropathic pain at the same time. This type of affliction is called “mixed pain”.