Pain types

Keeping a pain diary can be useful for all forms of pain. It is most frequently used for chronic pain. In general, acute pain can be distinguished from chronic pain.

Acute pain is the result of tissue damage and thus has a warning function by signalling this tissue damage. Acute pain can, for example, lead to an acceleration of the heartbeat, an increase in blood pressure and breathing rate and sweating. Chronic pain is pain that lasts for a long time.

Often this pain has no warning function – it is there even though there is no tissue damage. In principle it is useless and often delays the healing process. Chronic pain can also lead to depression, appetite disorders or insomnia.

The constant pain often leads to social withdrawal and thus to a worsened quality of life. If acute pain is insufficiently treated, it can lead to the development of chronic pain. A third form of pain is recurrent pain, which is neither acute nor chronic.

They occur repeatedly at more or less regular intervals. Examples are menstrual pain or migraine. A mixed form, for which it is very often recommended to keep a pain diary, is tumor pain.

These are pains that are triggered by tumor diseases. Both acute and chronic pain can occur and the accompanying tumor therapy can also cause pain through surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. The body stores its experiences with pain in the central nervous system.

Due to the so-called pain memory, pain can then be felt even though no damage has been done to it. If this occurs, the pain has become a disease in its own right. Therefore, the basis of any successful treatment of pain is to make the correct diagnosis and thus to recognize whether there is a concrete cause for the pain or whether the cause lies in the nerve itself.

Pain analysis

If pain occurs over a long period of time, a pain diary should be kept. Over a certain period, often two to four weeks, all factors relevant to the pain are recorded. The subsequent evaluation can often reveal previously unexpected correlations. Thus, the pain diary can reveal previously unknown triggers or intensifiers of the pain. This enables the patient to react to it.Causes can be avoided or, for example, in migraine attacks, which regularly occur at the beginning of menstrual bleeding, medication can be taken early to relieve the pain.