Pain is very hard to describe for everyone. It is commonly summarised as “It just hurts, Doc”.
But if you think about it, pain is made up of many different sensations and emotions. It may just be an ache for some people, but for others it can burn, stab, be intermittently sharp, be associated with muscle tightness, pins and needles, or a myriad of other symptoms.
There may also be an underlying cause that contributes to the pain and consequences of it, which generally impact on how you sleep, and how you feel, and how you do the things you love.
The Pain Pie is simply a way to think about pain. There is no magic research to it, it is just a means of trying to explain that pain is not just one sensation. From a technical perspective the Pain Pie is made up of the 3 components of the pain system, and each component broken into pieces of the pie. The blue sections are pain arising from body parts, white sections highlight pain arising from nerves, and the dark gray sections include pain coming from or amplified by the spinal cord and brain. Each piece of the pie has its own characteristics and treatment options. Some of these are distinct, others overlapping.
The Pain Pie is also an attempt at not getting caught in thinking there is just one solution to pain eg. “I have an operation that will fix you” or “All you need to do is think differently about your pain”. These approaches may form important parts of helping treat your pain but they may not result in significant decreases in pain when used alone. What’s more, if these don’t work, it doesn’t mean there are not more options. The Pain Pie can be used to identify all the pieces of your pain, rather than treating just one piece. For example, we can treat a patient with inflammatory pain by prescribing anti-inflammatories and only decrease their pain by 10-20%. Or, we can treat several pieces of the pain pie at once with the aim to shrink the entire pie and get a greater overall improvement in pain.
