“Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience, which is associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or is described in terms of such damage” is the strict scientific definition that was given to pain by the International Association of the Study of Pain. But for everyone, pain is simply an unpleasant sensation that hurts. It is a subjective feeling that everyone learns through own experiences since early life. And there is much that can be learnt about pain and how it can be relieved, but for your doctor there is only pain if you tell him or her about your suffering. So, always tell your doctor about pain.
Pain can be
acute - lasting only a short while - or
chronic, lasting longer – sometimes even for life.
Acute pain is pain of short duration and usually has an easily identifiable cause. This type of pain generally originates outside the brain (in the peripheral nervous system 
), but is processed and interpreted in the brain (by the central nervous system ).
In fact, acute pain functions a warning signal for present or nearby damage: it is the normal physiological response to an adverse or noxious stimulus that causes the pain. This stimulus can be mechanical (such as after a bone fracture), thermal (such as with burns) or chemical (such as due to inflammatory reaction in the body during acute illness – think about the muscle pains during a flue or joint pains in arthritis).
It usually responds well to painkillers and is thus limited in time.
Chronic pain is often independent from the original cause of the pain. The cause of pain may no longer exist but the overexited nerves still report pain to the brain. In other cases the cause of pain may still exist and cannot always be treated or removed,as it can be an incurable or persistent disease.
The pain lasts thus longer than normal for an injury to heal or an ongoing condition to improve. The pain perception may even become totally detached from the original pain stimulus, so that the pain signal has lost its warning function. Constant or intermittent pain has thus often outlived its purpose: it does no longer help the body to prevent injury. One also speaks of chronification of pain which occurs as sequence of a vicious cycle wherein untreated pain stimuli further evoke additional pain responses. Therefore, chronic pain is usually much more difficult to treat than acute pain; it should be considered a disease entity of its own. Conditions that cause such pain are further discussed under "What causes pain?".
Interrupting the vicious pain cycle
Good acute pain control should aim at avoiding chronification of pain (Sandkuhler 2000; Schnitzler et al. 2000). There is emerging evidence that persisting pain leads to central damage in the spinal cord and brain, leading to permanent changes (pain memory), even after withdrawal of the noxious stimulus. Hence, adequate pain control is important, in order to avoid the facilitation and perpetuation to chronic intractable pain. So, always tell your doctor about pain.
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From human, functional and neurobiological perspective, it has become recognized that undertreatment of pain is unjustified. The American Pain Society and American Academy of Pain declared in a consensus statement that misconception about drug abuse should not hinder patients’ ability to receive the care they need and deserve. A European expert panel, (Kalso et al. 2003) recommends that management of chronic pain should always be directed to the underlying pain. But whatever the cause, the primary goal of patient care should be symptom control. So, telling your doctor about pain is the first step towards relief.
