Acute Pain Vs Chronic Pain
It’s important to understand the difference between these two types of pain
What is Acute Pain
This is when pain has been around less than 2-3 months.
Acute pain is varied, it could be as minor as a sore neck from waking up from a bad sleep (muscle and joint sprain) to major traumas like fractures, muscles tears, and ligament tears.
regardless of the severity, there are predictable changes throughout the body that occur.
We can expect to see: inflammation, swelling, increase pain sensitivity, muscle protection, altered movement (walking with a limp, restricted movement)
When the brain senses pain/inflammation/injury, its natural response is to protect the area from further trauma and allow it to heal. The muscles contract to splint the area and the surrounding areas move differently to offload pressure away from the area. The nerves also become more sensitive to pain, creating a loud reminder that you should be careful. The reaction is really powerful BUT if the message of pain and injury persists for longer than 2-3 months we create a big problem.
What is Chronic Pain
This is when pain persists longer than 3 months. The reaction in the brain and body from the pain and injury becomes hard-wired. this is a unique challenge when dealing with chronic pain. the longer that this pain persists, the harder it becomes for the body to move and react as it did before the injury. A use it or lose it situation.
How do you know what you have?
The chiropractor is highly trained to identify and diagnose your condition as acute or chronic and the severity of the changes present. The subsequent treatment plan will be tailored to the unique stage of your condition. This is crucial when aiming to make long-lasting changes to the injury and to stop it from coming back.
Treatment
Treatment varies significantly depending on chronicity and severity. A minor sprain or strain should heal very quickly, however, a muscle or ligament tear will take a lot longer because there is a lot of tissue repair that the body needs to do. When treating chronic issues many underlying issues need to be addressed. We need to turn down the alarm bells in the nervous system, reteach the area how to move as it did before the injury, and strengthen the body. The rehabilitation of chronic injuries can take a long time to fully correct the hard-wired protection and compensations.
Take-Home Message
Get checked early and treated early to heal fast and prevent it from becoming chronic.
Don’t let small issues turn into chronic and reoccurring problems
If you have a chronic condition, time and effort to resolve the issue is significantly longer than an acute injury, because we need to reteach the body how to move again.
BOOK NOW
Get assessed and correctly diagnosed by a chiropractor. Begin treatment with certainty, and face the challenge head on.