From our embryonic development we are formed from three different tissue types bone, skin and muscle and it is these tissue types that have today gone to classify the different types of pain. The classification of pain (nociception) has developed primarily from a view point of the body being a machine. Being human you’ll know that you are perhaps different to a machine because you may notice you have emotions and thoughts. Emotional and cognitive pain are not new concepts but are better accepted today as ‘real’. Those that make decisions about what things are allowed to be did not have the same stresses and strains as their patients in the past and were thus not able to comprehend ‘other’ pain. In contemporary life we can have similar stresses throughout the sociodemographics of the population and science is also catching up with human experience that has led to greater acceptance by the priviledged of ‘other’ pain.

Documented types of pain can be itch, tickle, ache, stab, shoot, pressure, tearing, crawling, electrical or combinations. Pain has a character, a position, a frequency and an intensity all of which are variable once the transition from acute to chronic pain has occured. The transition from acute to chronic pain is at present elusive to medical science so whom is affected or why chronic pain develops is unknown. Normal for chronic pain is that it will change character, position, frequency and intensity which can be dependent or independent from a specific movement or activity, thought or feeling. What is of importance in muscular type pain is it is the more common type to progress into chronicity and that muscular type pain is not in proportion to the problem i.e. in linear thought more pain means more serious but not in muscular pain as more pain can mean nothing other than a normal change in the physiology of pain not an increase in injury. It is these differences that are important as they allow for us to change. Sometimes treatment may bring out pain, may lessen pain or may have a delayed effect on pain. In the process of immediate evaluation of pain to see if an intervention has worked pain is not the best clinical indicator.

The first phase of healing is 12 -72 hours, the second is 3 days -14 days and after 14 days it depends upon the type of pain as it can be normal to have low grade pain for 18-24 months whilst the body heals, whilst the emotional dust settles and or whilst you change the way you think.