Body pain happens all the time in real life. When writing your story, you want to bring your characters to life. By creating characters and an environment that is immersive and realistic (as possible), it helps your readers relate to your characters. This is a quick guide to body pain, that is especially useful for all those adventures your characters will be going on. No one survives a dragon attack or war without some kind of injury. At the very least, some muscle soreness.
1st stage: Acute This is the start of the process after getting hurt. Depending on the severity, often lasts up to a week. Characteristics: severe pain, inflammation/swelling, dark bruises (red, black and blue), muscle weakness, muscle spasms, reduced range of motion.
2nd stage: Sub-Acute This is when your body is starting to heal the tissue by creating scar tissue to replace or repair damage. Can last several weeks Characteristics: reduced swelling, bruises are clearing (yellow, green, brown), range of motion is starting to improve,less pain than before.
3rd stage: Chronic This is the final stage of the healing process. It can last months, if not years. Your body is finally adapting to the changes. Pain is no longer associated with the injury, but instead how the body healed. Characteristics: no bruising, little to no swelling, mature scar tissue (usually tough, and harder to move than other tissue), pain is more of an ache, not sharp. If not taking care of, mature scar tissue can cause muscle tension and reduced range of motion. Pain mostly comes on at the end range of a movement, or with stretching.
Visceral pain is organ pain. When one of your organs are causing problems, or are in pain, it typically feels more like a dull pain, or a pressure. The pain is usually vague, so itās hard to tell where itās coming from. Thankfully, visceral pain usually follows typical pain patterns, and you can easily find charts online. Example: Lung and diaphragm pain is usually around your neck and shoulders.
Nerve pain happens when the nerve is being pinched, compressed or was directly injured. Characteristics: shooting, tingling, zaps, numbness, stabbing or burning. Numbness is not like an analgesic. It can be a reduced sensory feelings, meaning you may not feel it if someone touches that part, but it can be very painful. Nerve pain will follow the length of the nerve.
These pains are directly associated with a trauma. Pain is localized to the specific bone or joint. Characteristics: Usually described as a sharp pain, especially with movements involving the painful area.
Muscle pain is extensive. Muscles work hard to protect your body while injured. Muscles will tense when the body is in pain, which usually results in more problems. This pain can be caused by overuse, injury, emotional and physical stress, or compensation for other injuries. Characteristics: deep steady aches, sharp, shooting pain, soreness, burning in muscles, spasms. Muscles will have two main problems if not injured: tension and trigger points. Trigger Points (aka knots) happen in very tense muscles. Trigger points follows specific patterns in each muscle. Example: a trigger point in the upper traps muscle is felt in the head, neck and shoulders. Pains and tensions like these can often be the cause of headaches.
Your brain processes pain in a specific way. Most often, your brain is so busy running everything, when it comes to experiencing pain, it canāt do it all at once. Thankfully. This means, if you have pain in your neck, your back, and your feet, there will usually only be one as the most painful while the others are background pain. The worst pain will usually be associated with your activities, and which part of your body youāre using the most. When getting rid of one of these pains, the next most painful one will be most noticeable. Have you ever had pain on one side of your body, then had it fixed with physio or a massage, then all of a sudden you notice pain somewhere else? It may not be new, itās just that your body wasnāt focusing on that problem.
Let me know if this was useful to you, or if you have any questions or comments.
Please let me know if something I wrote is wrong.
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