Types of Pain and How Massage Can Assist

Pain come in many different ways. No two pains are the same and it shows in lot of different types and symptoms. There are multiple cause of how you feel pain but we shall learn from remedial massage therapist point of view which type of pain that we deal with the most.

Types of pain

Now when you first come into manual therapist’s clinic such as RMT, Physio, or chiropractic, you would have filled the form with diagram of the human body and check which type of pain you feel like aches, tightness, sharp or numb. These are all ‘pain’ but it is also the evidence that we can tract and find different cause, actual problematic area.

• Acute & Chronic Pain

First, we have Acute & Chronic pain which they are only differ by the time period as acute pain is when you feel the pain less than 3months and then it becomes chronic pain afterwards. Often acute pain is related to injuries such as muscle strain, ligament sprain, burn, or bruise, etc. Sometime acute pain can persist and becomes chronic pain but sometime chronic pain can have no specific known cause.

• Nociceptive & Neuropathic Pain

Nociceptive is the most common type of pain that we feel as it occurs when there is a potential or actual soft tissue damage that stimulates the nociceptors which is the specialized pain receptors located throughout the body. The symptoms would be: aches, pressure, cramping, joint pain, and more.

Neuropathic pain, as the name says, it is related to nervous system. You would feel neurological pain when there is a damage, dysfunction to the nervous system as it can misfire and send pain signal when it’s not working properly even when there’s no injury. The symptoms would be: burning, freezing, sharp, shooting, numbness, tingling, stabbing.

How Remedial massage can assist your pain?

Remedial massage can definitely help and assist your pain journey but it may not “cure” it. It matters that what type of pain, cause, or complication you are going through but IF it is soft tissue related pain, mild neuropathic pain then there is definitely a chance that you might be able to reduce pain and improve daily life.

For acute pain caused by a mild injury can be treated with dry needling, myofascial release, gentler work like soft tissue massage to reduce inflammation but for chronic pain that you have had it for years ongoing then adding deep tissue, trigger point therapy (still within your pain threshold) will help to release the superficial tension, breaking the fascia adhesion, and improve circulation to the area that’s causing the pain. For the neuropathic pain, it will be the combination of the two, depends on how acute it is, the level of the pain, and after doing some testing of which nerve is compromised. However, gentle work to start with and I have seen some good results for clients with neuropathic pain as well. These aren't the set treatment plan for everyone as every body is different and we understand that.

Everything in our body needs time and consistency to change and adapt so I recommend once a week for 3 weeks to begin with to really get things moving in the body, and then revaluate the pain and overall symptoms to plan the next step.

Contact us to learn more about the treatment options, and share what you are going through.

Written by Seonkyo Kim; Dip. RMT

Reference:

https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/pain