Although most people are interested in the source of pain, equally important is the mechanism of pain. As I mentioned in another post, pain is an output based on one or more different levels of processing. The mechanism will help determine what you can do to help yourself, the prognosis and the most effective form of treatment. For instance, you may have low back pain related to long periods of sitting. It's also worse in the morning and feels better after a period of moving. A possible mechanism is ischemia, which means that frequent periods of movement is indicated for treatment. This will increase perfusion to the tissues thereby minimizing the nocioceptive signal.
Of course this does not mean that functional changes have not occurred (i.e. trophic changes, inhibition, etc) but it does help you understand why you may be experiencing the pain at that given time.
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