It is important to recognize and acknowledge pain at its initial phase, because having some time to prepare for it can give inestimate advantage. And yous should understand the difference between the two main types of pain: acute and chronic.

Chronic pain is the type of pain that persists over time. It lasts from a few months up to several years, unless addressed by a specialist. This type of pain can be sorted into three kinds:

• incident pain – caused by any sort of movement
• anticipatory pain – caused by anxiety and fear,
• remembered pain – caused by psychological reaction to a particular situation experienced in the past

Acute pain is caused by other factors and has a totally different mechanism. It can cause various side-effects and needs to be addressed quickly. However, on of the main aspects when dealing with acute pain is pain threshold. It varies significantly among people and there are numerous reasons that can raise and lower pain threshold. Understanding this difference is critical for pain management because what may seem insignificant for one person, can be experienced as a fatal pain by another.

The two types of pain described above also have their own methods of therapy. Chronic pain can sometimes be treated even without medications by techniques such as yoga, qigong, meditation, massage, relaxation, etc. Acute pain is usually treated on a short term basis with analgesics such as Tramadol and many others.

Chronic pain can be caused directly by an injury or disease, or it may be a side effect or complication following surgery, caused by drug interactions, etc. Always liking to produce lists, doctors have classified pain into the following categories:

Nociceptive where you feel a sensation in a specific location. This may be somatic and so felt in the joints, bones, muscles and ligaments, or visceral which is felt in the internal organs such as the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. The latter can be more difficult to localize because the pain simply comes from inside the body.

Non-nociceptive may be neuropathic, i.e. pain generated by the nervous system and not tied to a specific location in the body. When the nervous system is damaged, the messages become more difficult to interpret and the brain is often confused by random effects. The result is unpredictable feelings of tingling, numbness, pins and needles and other unpleasant symptoms. Alternatively, there may be sympathetic pain where the skin and tissue around an injury become unusually sensitive and restrict movement.

No matter which variety of pain you may have, there are a range of analgesics or painkillers available to relieve any suffering. The less powerful drugs are the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) which reduce swelling and inflammation in the joints and elsewhere. The more powerful deal with moderate to severe pain with tramadol being the most commonly prescribed because it is less likely to cause dependence than the opiates. Tramadol works by changing the way in which the neurotransmitters carry messages in the nervous system. Because of this, it is equally effective no matter what the cause of the pain, i.e. localized or arising from the nervous system itself. The messages are not carried to the brain or not clearly interpreted as being pain messages. Thus, you can have a reasonably good quality of life even though the source of the pain remains active in your body.