What is joint pain

Joint pain can be a symptom experienced by both adults and children depending on
underlying factors such as age, recent illness, activity or trauma.  You may experience
acute joint pain immediately after an injury or blunt trauma or have persistent mild
aching pain and soreness caused by overuse such as pain in your back after doing
gardening. Any joint in your body may be at risk.  Stiffness and painful movement
may occur in the hips, knees, fingers, feet, or the spine.  The cause of your pain and
limitation may be due to a form of arthritis.  Arthritis can result from the normal wear
and tear of the joints, or form injury, inflammation, infection of some unknown cause.

What is Chronic Pain?


Low back pain is considered to be chronic if it has been present for longer than three months. Chronic low back pain may originate from an injury, disease or stresses on different structures of the body. The type of pain may vary greatly and may be felt as bone pain, 
nerve pain or muscle pain. The sensation of pain may also vary. For instance, pain may be aching, burning, stabbing or tingling, sharp or dull, and well-defined or vague. The intensity may range from mild to severe. Many times, the source of the pain is not known or cannot be clearly defined. In fact, in many instances, the condition or injury 
that triggered the pain may be completely healed and undetectable, but the pain may still continue to bother you. Even if the original cause of the pain is healed or unclear, the pain you feel is real. It is your health care provider’s job respect your experience of pain, regardless of its cause.






What Causes It?


Chronic low back pain may be caused by many different sources. It may start from diseases, injuries or stresses to many different structures including bones, muscles, ligaments, joints, nerves or the spinal cord. The affected structure will 
send a signal through nerve endings, up the spinal cord and into the brain where it registers as pain. Many different theories try to explain chronic pain. The exact mechanism is not completely understood.  In general, it is believed that the nerve pathways that carry the pain signals from the nerve endings through the spinal cord and to the brain may become sensitized. Sensitization of these pathways may increase the perceived pain out of proportion to the source of the pain. Stimuli that ordinarily are not perceived as painful, such as light touch, can be amplified or changed by these sensitized pathways andexperienced as pain. Sometimes, even after the 
original injury or disease process has healed, sensitized pathways continue to send signals to the brain.  These signals feel just as real and sometimes worse than the pain caused by the original injury or disease process.Imagine an old television set or computer screen on which the same image is continuously projected. This image is eventually “burned” into the screen. Even when the screen is turned off, the image can still be seen on the screen. In the same manner, after the original source of 
pain is healed or no longer present, chronic pain patients may continue to feel pain. Although this is an over simplification of what may happen in chronic pain, it helps explain the basic concept.




Important Topic



Acute neck pain
Knee Pain
Treatments

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