Bone pain and joint/muscle pain affect similar parts of your body. This can make it hard to tell the difference between them. You might feel muscle pain or aches after a hard workout or when you have the flu. Or you might feel achiness in joints like your ankles, knees, or elbows from arthritis or just getting older.
Bone pain usually feels deeper, sharper, and more intense than muscle pain. Muscle pain also feels more generalized throughout the body and tends to ease within a day or two, while bone pain is more focused and lasts longer. Bone pain is also less common than joint or muscle pain, and should always be taken seriously.
Common Causes of Bone Pain
Injury. If you have new, sharp bone pain, you may have a fracture, or broken bone. That can be the result of a sudden traumatic injury, like a car accident, fall, or sports injury. You could also have a small crack in your bone called a stress fracture. Athletes often get these from overusing their bodies.
Osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a bone disease that makes your bones less dense and takes away bone mass. Typically this happens in older adults. The decrease in bone strength can lead to painful fractures, which can happen anywhere in the body but are most common in the hip, the spine, and the wrist.
