Health

By Heather Auxier, APRN-CNP
Certified Nurse Practitioner, Blanchard Valley Pain Management

What is chronic pain? This is an unfavorable, unpleasant sensory and emotional experience that is persistent lasting weeks to years. 

The three types of musculoskeletal pain include nociceptive, neuropathic and nociplastic.

Nociceptive pain can be associated with tissue damage or injury. Examples of this kind of pain would include spraining your ankle or touching a hot stove. 

Burning, stabbing, shooting and prickling are often descriptive words for neuropathic pain.  

Often, people will say this pain travels or is radicular in nature. Other diagnoses for this kind of pain include trigeminal neuralgia, diabetic neuropathy and sciatica. 

Lastly, nociplastic pain is a pain that arises from altered nociception despite no clear evidence for disease or actual threatened tissue damage, causing an activation of peripheral nociceptors or evidence for disease or lesion of the somatosensory system causing the pain. The net result of this pain is usually widespread and amplified. Fibromyalgia is considered a nociplastic type of pain. 

By Michael Flores, PhD
Big Lots Outpatient Behavioral Health
Nationwide Children’s Hospital*

Defiant behavior among toddlers and young children (commonly known as “the terrible twos”) is a normal phase of child development. Children might throw temper tantrums or have rapid mood changes. They want to do things by themselves. Their favorite word is “no.” Similar developmentally appropriate behavior often shows up again during the teen years. Teens may rebel against household rules or act frustrated or angry. Some of this behavior stems from hormonal changes associated with puberty, as their bodies and minds develop.

Temper tantrums are usually triggered when a child is frustrated, tired or hungry. As children learn more appropriate ways to communicate their wants and needs, and when clear limits and behavioral expectations are consistently set, these outbursts tend to become less frequent. However, some children continue to struggle with aggressive or impulsive behavior. Sometimes these actions may pose a threat to their safety or the safety of others. For some people, the behaviors can continue through childhood and even into adulthood.