How to Ease Chronic Pain in Your Muscles, Nerves, and Everywhere Else

Any pain that originates as the result of an injury like a bump or a twisted ankle is called nociceptive pain.

What it feels like: You can feel this throbbing, aching, or pressure in your muscles and joints (the most common spots) or in your bones, skin, tendons, ligaments, and even internal organs. Most chronic pain falls into this category.

What causes it: A wide range of injuries, including torn muscles, torn ligaments, and sprains, can lead to chronic muscle and joint pain. This can happen when the inflammation triggered by an injury does not ease up, even after the initial injury heals. The normal wear and tear that your body endures with age can also lead to painful inflammatory conditions like osteoarthritis and degenerative disc disease (when the cushioning in the spine wears away).

How to Get Relief
When you suffer from muscle and joint pain, you might avoid exercise for fear of making your misery worse. But research has found that engaging in low-impact activities—such as yoga, tai chi, cycling, and swimming—can actually reduce the severity of your pain and improve your quality of life.

If you’re not sure how to start safely, physical therapy can help you learn moves you can try at home or at the gym to stretch or strengthen a particular area without injury.

“Movement therapies can be useful in helping to get people active again and helping them get over their fears,” says Daniel Clauw, MD, a professor of anesthesiology, medicine, and psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School. “Because a lot of times with chronic pain, people develop a fear of movement, and that makes the pain worse.”

You can also try medication. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen and naproxen, can temporarily reduce inflammation and soreness in people with chronic muscle or joint pain. However, going above the suggested dose can lead to side effects, including stomach ulcers and gastric bleeding.

Topical treatments, like lidocaine or capsaicin patches, work well if the pain is localized in one area. And certain antidepressants—in particular, duloxetine—may help, too, because these medications not only affect mood but also can change how the brain processes pain signals.

Nerve pain, aka neuropathic pain, is caused by damage or disease affecting the nervous system.

What it feels like: It can feel sharp and knife-like—shooting, stabbing—or more like strange electrical sensations (prickling, numbness, tingling). People with nerve pain are often hypersensitive to experiences that normally aren’t painful, such as light touch or temperature changes.

What causes it: The most common conditions that lead to chronic nerve pain are diabetic neuropathy, postherpetic neuralgia, and a pinched nerve in the spine. Diabetic neuropathy, frequently occurring in the legs and feet, is nerve damage caused by high blood sugar in people with diabetes. Postherpetic neuralgia is a complication of shingles. A herniated disc or spinal arthritis can cause a pinched nerve.

How to Get Relief
Common pain relievers like ibuprofen don’t usually help with nerve pain. Instead, first-line medications are antidepressants such as duloxetine and antiseizure drugs like gabapentin, which work by calming down overactive nerves. Topical lidocaine and capsaicin can reduce the hypersensitivity and spontaneous pain (which occurs with no apparent trigger) often experienced by those with nerve pain. And a nerve stimulation device such as a TENS unit can be effective too.

Beyond drugs and devices, research has increasingly found that cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as mindfulness and meditation, can help ease chronic nerve pain. One 2024 review—which looked at 33 studies that included 1,453 participants—found that these sorts of techniques could lead to significant reductions in pain, disability, and distress.

“For 20 years now, we have been studying the effects of mindfulness-based meditation on chronic pain as compared to placebo,” says Fadel Zeidan, PhD, director of the Pain Health and Mindfulness Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego. “What we’ve found is that mindfulness is very effective at being able to immediately and directly assuage the experience of evoked pain.” (Evoked pain refers to sudden flare-ups of pain that can occur with certain movements, such as bending down or rolling over, or stimuli, like cold or pressure.)

You can get started with guided mindfulness meditation using free online resources. Try the Insight Timer app or the Mindfulness Coach app from the Department of Veterans Affairs, or the UCLA Mindful site.

You can also ask your primary care provider to refer you to a licensed mental health professional who specializes in therapy for chronic pain, which may include mindfulness-based cognitive therapy or acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). The latter helps people accept their pain, work on lifestyle changes to reduce its effects, and focus on strategies to help them do more of the things that matter most to them.

A third type of pain, first named as a distinct category in 2016, arises without evidence of injury or nerve damage.

What it feels like: Called nociplastic pain, it is characterized by being unusually widespread—sometimes felt all throughout the body—and sometimes unusually intense. People may experience pain in different parts of their bodies at different times, or all at once.

Widespread pain is often accompanied by fatigue, sleep problems, and sensitivity to sensory stimuli like bright lights, loud noises, and strong odors.

What causes it: People with widespread pain experience changes to their nervous system that result in heightened pain sensitivity. Imagine that for some people, their personal volume dial for pain is permanently set to 10—that’s scientists’ best guess on what is driving this type of pain, which can be debilitating.

Conditions known to cause nociplastic pain include fibromyalgia, bladder pain syndrome, complex regional pain syndrome, and nonspecific back pain.

How to Get Relief
The first step is to try to turn down the reactivity of the nervous system.

Getting up and moving may facilitate better sleep, which can help ease this type of pain. It doesn’t have to be intense exercise, just light physical activity of some kind. Walking, yoga, or tai chi can be a good place to start, Clauw says. If your pain is severe, it’s best to start moving under the guidance of a physical therapist.

Some of the psychological techniques that work for nerve pain can help here too. Cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, teaches coping skills that lessen the pain’s intensity by reframing negative thoughts, and pain reprocessing therapy teaches people to silence pain signals that may be false alarms.

You should always see a doctor if you have pain that’s severe, getting worse, or not improving with home remedies. Seek immediate care if you are experiencing pain accompanied by numbness or weakness, loss of bowel or bladder control, unexplained weight loss, or fever. For general pain from things like strained muscles, surgery, or sprains, here’s what actually works.

RICE Method
For acute muscle or joint pain, what’s known as the RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) method is a quick and safe way to provide immediate pain relief. Rest after an injury to help your body heal, use ice packs to numb tissues, apply gentle compression to control swelling, and elevate your injury above the level of your heart.

Over-the-Counter Medications
Ibuprofen works better for inflammation-related pain, such as acute back and neck pain, muscle strains, sinus infections, and toothaches. Acetaminophen, on the other hand, reduces pain signals in the nervous system, which can make it a good option for conditions like headaches and sore throats.

Physical Therapy
Research has found that people with acute low back pain who do physical therapy early on tend to use fewer opioids and are less likely to end up needing a spine injection or surgery. You might not even need a referral.

Acupuncture
A 2022 review found acupuncture therapy to be effective for acute pain. Though some research suggests that a placebo effect may be involved, acupuncture is quite safe and can help people avoid reliance on pain medications.

If you have chronic pain that doesn’t respond to first- or second-line treatments, or seems to be getting worse over time, it might be time to see a pain specialist. These are doctors who have special training and credentialing in pain management (above and beyond their initial specialty), and they can access a toolbox of treatments to help you find relief.

Pain specialists are usually board-certified in anesthesiology, neurology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, or psychiatry. They can also connect patients with physical therapists, pain psychologists, and other experts.

Pain medicine is considered a subspecialty. You can search for physicians certified to practice it through the directories provided by organizations such as the American Board of Anesthesiology, the American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. If you live near an academic medical center, give it a call: Many have multidisciplinary pain clinics that are home to a range of specialists in one centralized location.

Look for a specialist or clinic that offers a wide variety of nondrug approaches (such as physical therapy and talk therapy) rather than only medication or injections. Before you book an appointment, check with your health insurance provider to find out whether you need a referral from your primary care physician.