Chronic Pain vs Acute Pain: What’s the Difference?

Intro: If you are suffering from pain, you’ll want to get relief from your symptoms as soon as possible. It’s important to know whether you are dealing with chronic pain or acute pain because it will impact what type of treatment you need. When you see our team at Discover Life Chiropractic in Tacoma, we will review your health history and perform a physical exam. Once we identify whether you are dealing with acute pain, chronic pain, or both, we can treat your condition. Discover Life Chiropractic provides chiropractic care for pain relief, including acute pain treatment and chronic pain treatment in Tacoma.

What’s the Difference Between Acute and Chronic Pain?

Although they may feel the same, acute and chronic pain are different. We will go over the differences so you can get an idea of which category your own pain falls under. At the end of the day, however, a chiropractor can let you know for sure.

Acute pain: is like an alarm telling your body that it has been injured. Its purpose is to let your brain know that you need to protect the injured area, seek treatment, and allow it to heal. Acute pain is usually a direct response to an injury and appears soon after being injured. It can happen from sports injuries, work injuries, car accidents, and more. Acute pain is very unpleasant, but it’s necessary to keep you from hurting yourself further.

How does acute pain feel? This can vary widely depending on the type of injury you have. Often, acute pain feels sharp, throbbing, jabbing, and/or aching. Injuries can also cause inflammation and stiffness. It’s usually easy to pinpoint where the acute pain originates and what caused it.

It’s important not to ignore acute pain when it appears. This can lead to improper healing, causing serious issues down the road. Acute pain is meant to be temporary, but crucial, warning. If it doesn’t go away within a few days or weeks, then something is wrong. This indicates that the injury is not healing as it should. At that point, acute pain can become chronic pain. Timely chiropractic treatment is a great way to keep injuries from progressing.

Chronic pain: If acute pain is like an alarm, chronic pain is like a faulty alarm that won’t stop. It continues for months or years after the initial injury. Chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts for over three months, and it means that your body is constantly in a state of inflammation and sensitivity. The pain signals are continuing to travel to your brain, even though the injury has already technically healed. Chronic pain is caused by the nervous system getting stuck in a negative feedback loop.

What does chronic pain feel like? Chronic pain is stubborn, aching, and persistent. You may not feel it constantly, but chronic pain is recurring and never goes away completely. Some examples include sciatic pain, chronic headaches, lower back ache, muscle tenderness, fatigue, mobility problems or stiffness, joint pain, and more. Chronic pain can seriously impact a person’s life and make daily activities difficult or even impossible. Something as simple as walking can become excruciating.

Don’t just ignore chronic pain when it happens. Pain management can greatly improve your quality of life. Chronic pain affects millions of people in America, over twenty percent of the population. While acute pain usually has an obvious cause, chronic pain can come from conditions that may be difficult to diagnose and treat.

At Discover Life Chiropractic, we focus on getting to the root of the problem so that we can properly treat it. Effective chronic pain relief that doesn’t simply mask the pain is important. We want to help our patients get back to hiking, gardening, working, spending time with family, playing sports, and simply being in control of their own lives. Don’t let chronic pain dictate your decisions.

Conclusion: At Discover Life Chiropractic, our experts aim to help our patients improve their functioning and experience pain relief. Whether you are suffering from chronic pain or acute pain, we can put together a comprehensive treatment plan tailored to your needs. Reach out to us to schedule an appointment. Your treatment plan may include a combination of stretches, exercises, massage therapy, and spine adjustments. Don’t suffer from pain needlessly when you could be receiving treatment and getting back to doing what you love.