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Pain

Pain is a signal in our nervous system that something might be wrong. It is an unpleasant physical sensation or emotional experience. Pain has seven dimensions or core aspects: physical, sensory, behavioral, sociocultural, cognitive, affective and spiritual.

It is critical to understand the nature and type of pain that you are experiencing to properly treat it. We have named few common types and causes of pains:

Acute Pain:

Acute Pain is a sharp pain experienced for a short period by the body as a response to an ailment or injury. Examples of acute pain are due to an illness, surgery, injection or a cut.

Chronic Pain:

Chronic pain lasts longer and can be harder to pinpoint the cause than acute pain. Chronic pain could be caused by injuries, migraine, back pain or cancer.

Nociceptive Pain:

Nociceptive pain comes about when you have an injured tissue such as fractures, bruises, burns or cuts.

Neuropathic Pain:

Neuropathic pain arises when a nerve is injured. Diseases, diabetes, cancer, burning or cuts might result in neuropathic pain.

Functional Pain:

Functional pain can be either chronic or acute and it is not caused by any underlying deseases in the body. Examples of functional pain are abdominal pain and chest discomfort.

There are numerous treatment options for different types of pain and discomfort. Some pains might stay longer or even get worse. From infant to old age, at any one stage of our life, we will experience pain in any part of our body. Usually there are early signs and symptoms before pain strikes but it can also come suddenly due to physical, mental or emotional impact.

Pains can be described by its characteristics such as location, radiation, mode of onset, character, temporal pattern, exacerbating, relieving factors and intensity. As a guide, to help you describe your pain and discuss how it affects you, the following questions might help:

– What started the pain?

– Where do you feel the pain?

– How often does the pain happen?

– How long have you had your pain?

– How does your pain affect your daily life?

– Is your pain located in one spot or spread out?

– Does the pain comes and go or is there all the time?

– How servere is the pain? (See the rating scale below).

– How does the pain feel? (See below table for helping words).

 Pain Scale:

Do not be disheartened or lose hope when pain persists or becomes unbearable. Always seek proper medical consultation to heal, relief or perform pain management to improve and to regain your healthy life style living.

We need to open up and seek physical, emotional or financial support from our family members, friends or society at large. As Singapore citizens, we are very blessed and priviledged to have an excellent health care system with very supportive government. Health care is heavily subsidised with various healthcare financing schemes, the use of MediShield Life, CareShield Life, MediSave, CHAS and ElderShield.

Physio exercises and healthy living are the best medicine.