Is It Muscle Pain, Nerve Pain, or Joint Pain?

A sore shoulder or an achy knee can be a problem for anyone, and nearly everyone will experience this type of pain at some point in their lives. Pain that we feel around our joints can make life difficult in many ways, interfering with our ability to work and perform many of our basic daily tasks. While most of these pains will improve and disappear over time if properly cared for, understanding the underlying reason for the pain can help you understand what you should be doing about it, and whether you should seek medical help.

Pain that we experience around our joints can have several different causes: muscles, tendons, ligaments, and nerves all participate in how these essential body parts work. The pain itself can often provide useful information about what’s happening inside your body. While your goal should never be to diagnose yourself, having a deeper understanding of what your body is trying to tell you can be helpful for many different reasons.

What Muscle Pain Usually Feels Like

Pain is interpreted by the brain, and the body’s pain-signaling system isn’t always perfect, but there are some characteristics of muscle pain that often distinguish it from other types of pain. Pain that you would describe as “sore” or “aching”, or pain that is accompanied by tightness or cramping can often be attributed to your muscles. Other common symptoms of muscle pain can include:

Tenderness when being touched
Limited flexibility
Pain that improves with gentle movement

Muscle pain is often associated with exercise or overuse, poor posture or movement, or prolonged sitting. There is a type of muscle pain that you don’t feel until 1-3 days after intense exercise or physical activity. This Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) is caused by microscopic tears in your muscle fibers and happens while your body is working to regrow or repair those fibers¹.

Some common examples of muscle pain can include achy calves after a long hike, a sore back after moving furniture, or a tight neck after working at a computer. Again, the purpose is not to diagnose yourself, but to help you recognize patterns and know when it’s time to seek help.

What Nerve Pain Usually Feels Like

Nerves are the body’s information-signaling system, and as such when they are irritated the sensations can often be very different from those of muscle pain. Some common symptoms associated with nerve pain can include:

Burning
Shooting
Sharpness
Tingling
Numbness
The feeling of “pins and needles”

One of the trademarks of nerve pain is that it can feel like it’s moving. You may feel it down your arm into your hand or down your leg into your foot. Some common sources of nerve pain include sciatica or cervical radiculopathy, a neck pain that results from the pinching or inflammation of a cervical nerve where it exits the spine².

What Joint Pain Usually Feels Like

Joint pain can often manifest in ways that feel unique and different from muscle or nerve pain. While the term sounds like a general term for describing pain in an area of the body, joint pain refers to pain that is centered at the joint where the bones meet rather than the surrounding muscles or nerves. Some common indications of joint pain can include:

A deep, aching pain
Stiffness
Swelling
Clicking or grinding
Pain associated with weight bearing

This type of pain is very common in knee joints, hips, shoulders, and fingers. People suffering from arthritis will easily be able to distinguish joint pain from other types of pain. Arthritis, though, is far from the only cause of joint pain. It can be caused by an injury like a strain or sprain, by inflammation caused by tendinitis, or by many other conditions like bursitis, gout or lupus³.

Why Guessing Can Delay Recovery

As stated before, the purpose of this article is not to help you diagnose yourself; leave that to a medical professional. The purpose is to help you understand your body and recognize when you may need to seek help. Guessing wrong about the cause of your pain and your likelihood of recovery can often delay that recovery and potentially make things worse. Misunderstanding the source of pain can lead people to:

rest too long
stretch irritated nerves
ignore joint problems
massage something that actually needs stabilization
continue activities that worsen symptoms

Proper treatment and recovery often depend on identifying the underlying cause, and identifying the underlying cause sometimes depends on medical intervention. While most pain will improve with proper home care, treating your muscle pain like it’s nerve pain or treating your nerve pain like it’s joint pain can do more harm than good.

Physical Therapy Can Help You Identify the Real Problem

Physical therapists are uniquely qualified to identify the underlying causes of pain, as physical therapy is a discipline that treats the body holistically and recognizes the interconnected quality of different body parts and systems. The goal isn’t just to treat systems, but to truly understand where, why, and how the pain developed and to treat the underlying source. A professional physical therapy evaluation can identify problems in your:

movement
strength
flexibility
balance
joint mobility
posture

Once the underlying cause of your pain is discovered, your physical therapist can develop a personalized treatment plan tailored to your specific needs and abilities, helping you recover as quickly, safely, and completely as possible. Often, this means avoiding unnecessary surgeries or risky pain medications. It also means getting back to an active, healthy, pain-free life at your very best.

The skilled therapists at Strive! Physical Therapy Centers in Ocala, Summerfield, and Williston have been helping local residents and visitors identify and overcome pain for more than 40 years, and they would be happy to help you with yours. Call us today at 352.351.8883 or email us to schedule a free consultation.