Pain #1 - Types of Pain (How mainstream medical parlance differs from homeopathic vernacular)

When it comes right down to it, almost every complaint involves pain. Weiner’s Pain Management (Boswell and Cole 2007, p. 35) backs up this observation: “Pain is the reason for initial contact with any physician for the vast majority of medical problems.”

Looking over my clients’ chief complaints* from 2025, both acute and chronic, they almost all involve pain.

• Common illnesses (acute): sore throat, sinusitis, UTIs, pain from fever/flus, painful coughs, earaches…
• Recurring conditions: headaches and migraines, PMS, TMJ, endometriosis, abdominal pain from constipation, back pain (of all descriptions), hammer toe…
• Chronic conditions: neuropathy, pain stemming from advanced osteoporosis, pain in lungs (from longstanding asthma), rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, lupus, POTS…
• Recent onset: frozen shoulder, painful skin conditions (aplenty!), growing pains, plantar fasciitis, sciatica, trigeminal neuralgia, surgical pain…
• Musculoskeletal conditions… of every sort — acute and chronic, debilitating and intermittent (beyond what is listed above)…

The list goes on, and, at least for most of my clients, if it isn’t a strictly mental/emotional situation, pain is involved. Actually, most of the mental/emotional complaints also involve pain at some level.

“Pain is generally described as an unpleasant sensation” (Boswell and Cole 2007, p. 35). Though undoubtedly accurate, that’s not a very helpful description.

Digging around the internet, it appears there are 5 types of pain in modern medical parlance: acute, chronic, nociceptive, neuropathic and radicular; further broken down into somatic and visceral and mixed, but honestly, some of this seems to be splitting hairs. Keep reading…

Acute pain lasts for minutes up to 3-6 months and is generally a result of an injury or illness and (generally) improves with healing.

At some point, if that acute pain has hung around long enough (longer than 3-6 months), it will be termed chronic. This can be intermittent or constant and is often due to a long-standing health condition. However, this pain can linger even when the original complaint no longer exists.

Acute and chronic would be helpful in charting a patient’s history, but they don’t actually describe any pains.

There is a lot of mention of the word “nociceptive” online. I recently looked into this word when writing my Painkillers article and in that context, it makes sense; it refers to over-the-counter painkillers blocking pain by blocking nociception. If I right-click on this word on my computer, the following definition pops up: “the perception or the sensation of pain.” It seems to me that nociception is just a longer word for “pain” and, again, not a “type” of pain. Tabers (Venes 2017) uses more words to describe “nociception” : “the stimulus-response process involving the stimulation of peripheral pain-carrying nerve fibers and the transmission of impulses along peripheral nerves to the central nervous system, where the stimulus is perceived as pain.” Boswell (and Cole 2007, pp 37 and 40) talks about nociceptive pain as “a microscopic physical, chemical, or thermal event … giving good information to the body and brain that tissue is being damaged — or is about to be damaged — and that the body needs to do something about it.” With that, we’re going to do away with this word for now, too.

There is another word, similar to “nociceptive” — “nociplastic.”** Nociplastic refers to pain that exists in absence of tissue or nervous system damage. It is not quite, but it is similar to what is called psychogenic** pain: “characterized by the presence of pain in the absence of objective physical pathology” or, from the right-click: “having a psychological origin or cause rather than a physical one.” Again, this term does not actually describe physical pain.

Neuropathic and radicular are two more words that are, for our purposes, the same thing. Neuropathic refers to the “misfiring of wires” (Boswell and Cole 2007, p 40). “Radicular pain originates at the nerve root” (Boswell and Cole 2007, p 44) and refers to “radicle” meaning: “a structure resembling a rootlet, as a radicle of a nerve or vein” (Venes 2017). Radicular pain comes from compression or irritation of a nerve root and it typically radiates along the affected nerve. Neuropathy, however, stems from damage or dysfunction of the nerves… “any disease of the nerves” (Venes 2017). In other words, radicular pain is a type of neuropathic pain. These terms may be useful in understanding the pathophysiology of pain, but not particularly helpful when addressing pain homeopathically.

Other words frequently found in regard to pain are somatic and visceral. Somatic, according to the right-click: “relating to the body, especially as distinct from the mind.” Tabers takes it a little further in its third and fourth definitions: “Pertaining to structures of the body wall, such as skeletal muscles (somatic musculature) in contrast to structures associated with the viscera, such as visceral muscles (splanchnic musculature)” and, #4: “Pertaining to sensations perceived as originating from superficial or muscular structures of the body rather than sensations seeming to come from the internal organs (the viscera).” To close this loop, visceral, according to the Oxford Dictionary app, refers to “the internal organs in the main cavities of the body, especially those in the abdomen, e.g. the intestines.”

These terms are helpful in the pathophysiology, but, not so much in homeopathy — though, homeopathy does break down pain descriptors by location in the body… so maybe we’re getting a little closer.

Mixed pain is pain consisting of both nociceptive and neuropathic pain. Again, not helpful for our purposes.

I did stumble upon the Injury Center from the University of Michigan where allopathic pain descriptions inch nearer to homeopathic pain descriptions. This site mentions that neuropathic pain is often described as: burning, pins & needles, tingling, numbness, electric shocks/shooting, crawling (aka formication), itching and temperature intolerance. Visceral pain, they say, can be described as dull, throbbing, aching, pressure, fullness or tightness (think: angina and bowel obstruction).

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Pain is actually a very nuanced thing. Trying to describe pain can be very difficult. Trying to understand someone else’s description of pain is even harder and translating that into homeopathic rubrics is even more difficult, still!

International Association for the Study of Pain (2020) tells us that “pain is always a personal experience that is influenced to varying degrees by biological, psychological, and social factors.” IASP defines “pain” as: “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage.” Yep, we’re getting closer to describing pain, homeopathically speaking — Homeopathy knows that everything is relative to the person.

Turning to our trusty Dr. Murphy’s Repertory, I entered just the word “pain” in my Radar Opus software and it says there are 39,214 rubrics associated with that word.

Homeopathic pain terminology can be confusing. Fulgurating? Never heard of it. (It means flash, like lightning.) Some terms are pretty straight forward and some seem to overlap but I will include the lot from Murphy’s “generals” section so you’ll have them all in one place.

This is the beginning of a paid "Digging Deeper" article which can be viewed via subscription on my Substack or via subscription or single issues at Buymeacoffee.

Julia Coyte, CHom
Classically Practical homeopath

​#wellnessawaits

​* It appears that my clientele may be slightly different to most homeopathic customers. According to Witt (et al. 2005), the most common diagnoses treated in homeopathic practices in the US were: asthma, depression, otitis media and allergic rhinitis. Teut (et al. 2010) claim the most frequent diagnoses for the elderly seeking homeopathic treatment were hypertension and sleep disturbances.
** Homeopathy does not require “objective physical pathology” or “tissue or nervous system damage.” Pain is pain; it matters not from whence it stems.

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