Hip Pain
Move Freely Again
Do you suffer from hip pain? We understand how debilitating it can be. But you don’t have to live in pain, and you can prevent hip pain from recurring. We believe one of the first steps in finding hip pain relief is understanding your pain, how your hips work, and what’s causing the pain in the first place.
How Your Hips Work
Your hips are large ball and socket joints that are critical in supporting your weight and allowing you to walk and run. They consist of the thigh bone (femur), femoral head, acetabulum (socket), muscles, ligaments, and cartilage.
The cartilage covers, cushions, and protects the ball and socket joint. The hip joint is also surrounded by a capsule filled with synovial fluid, which combined with the cartilage, lets your hip move freely with minimal friction. The ligaments hold the bones in place, while the muscles lengthen and shorten causing your hip to move.
Hip pain results when these parts stop working together in harmony, because of injury, degeneration, or strain.
Types of Hip Pain
There are many types of hip pain, based on the quality of the pain and where it is located. Your doctor will ask you how long you have had hip pain, whether it is an ongoing problem or started suddenly. This will help them determine the cause of your pain, and develop an integrative plan of care.
- Hip joint pain
- Hip flexor pain (pain in the muscle where your thigh meets your hip)
- Outer hip pain
- Pain in buttocks and hip
- Lower back and hip pain
- Groin pain
Certain types of hip pain are more common in athletes, while other types become more common as people age.
What Causes Hip Pain?
Hip pain can be caused by a variety of things. Finding the root cause is critical to providing you long-lasting pain relief and inspiring you to achieve lifelong, whole-body wellness. Some common causes include:
- Osteoarthritis
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Hip fracture
- Bursitis
- IT Band Syndrome
- Tendinitis
- Muscle strain
- Hip labral tear
- Pregnancy
- Weak muscles and a sedentary lifestyle
- Obesity
Problems with the hip joint itself are felt deep inside the hip, while hip pain on the outside of your hip, upper thigh, or buttocks is usually caused by problems with the soft tissues that surround your hip joint.
Hip Pain Symptoms
Hip pain symptoms refer to the location of the pain and quality of the pain, as well as when it occurs. Common symptoms include:
- Hip pain when walking
- Hip pain radiating down leg
- Hip pain during pregnancy
- Dull pain
- Sharp pain
- Cramping
- Mild pulling
- Snapping or clicking sounds in your hips (crepitus)
Hip Pain FAQs
Q: What causes hip pain that radiates down the leg?
A: Sciatica. The sciatic nerve runs down your leg from your hip down the sides, back, and front of your leg. You may have pain, tingling, numbness, or weakness. Sciatica happens when the nerve becomes inflamed or entrapped. Sciatica is common in pregnancy, but is also a symptom of a herniated disc in your lower back.
Q: How do I know if my hip pain is serious?
A: Your hip pain is serious if it prevents you from leading the active lifestyle you want. Whether the pain is excruciating or just a nuisance, make an appointment to get your hip pain diagnosed and find some solutions. However, you should see a doctor immediately if you have:
- Sudden, intense pain
- A bulge or deformity of the hip
- A hip that won’t support your weight
- Inability to move your leg or hip
Q: Can knee pain cause hip pain?
A: Yes. The hip, knee, and ankle joints work together to help you walk. When you have pain in one, it changes your gait, and can put a strain on the other joints, affecting your range of motion and mobility. It’s important to determine the cause of both your hip pain and knee pain, because one may be causing the other.
Q: What can I do to relieve hip pain?
A: You can try some conservative measures at home, but if you have hip pain that is affecting your activities of daily living, you need to see a doctor.
How Cima Health Can Help
Cima Health provides restorative, lifelong solutions that target the root cause of your hip pain. Your care will start out with a comprehensive evaluation to assess your pain. We will also ask questions about your work and home life, lifestyle, and habits before making recommendations for an integrative plan of care. Together, we come up with conservative and alternative treatments that can help you achieve whole-body wellness and live pain-free for life.
Treating and preventing hip pain involves several treatment modalities, all of which you can receive in one location. They include:
- Chiropractic Care
- Joint Injections
- Physical Therapy
- Massage Therapy
- Physical Fitness
Let’s take a look at how each of these areas works together to provide you with natural pain relief and inspires you to make lifestyle changes to prevent hip pain in the future.
Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic care may provide nearly immediate hip pain relief, depending on the location and underlying cause of your pain. Chiropractic adjustments, manual therapy, dry needling, and Class IV laser treatment can all help relieve your pain.
Our Palm Beach Gardens chiropractors are all highly trained professionals and include:
Working with hip pain
Working with hip pain can be difficult, if not impossible, depending on your occupation. Regular chiropractic adjustments can help tremendously. But if your job requires you to stand all day or walk a lot, you may need work accommodations until your hip heals and you return to full duty.
Your chiropractor can recommend work restrictions to your employer if needed, such as desk duty, being allowed to sit instead of stand, being allowed to take more frequent breaks, etc. This is especially true if you are seeing the chiropractor as part of a workers’ compensation claim. Your doctor will discuss this with you as necessary.
Joint Injections
In addition to chiropractic care for hip pain relief, your team may determine you would benefit from joint injections. Our medical care team administers steroid injections (cortisone) into your hip joint(s), to provide pain relief and reduce inflammation. The doctor may also discuss giving you platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections for your hip, based on the cause of your hip pain and your individual circumstances.
Physical Therapy
Physical therapy (PT), when combined with other treatments can also help with hip pain. We may use manual therapy, joint mobilization, laser therapy, and other treatments to address your hip pain and help you heal.
We will develop an exercise and stretching program to help you get hip pain relief, increase mobility, and gain flexibility. We may also develop a fall prevention program for you or a loved one. If you are recovering from hip surgery, we will coordinate your physical therapy treatments with your doctor. You will be able to do many of these exercises and stretches for hip pain at home as well as with your physical therapist at Cima Health.
Massage Therapy
Massage therapy is another modality we offer that can complement the other treatments. Targeted, therapeutic massage can reduce inflammation and pain. Massage therapy stimulates the muscles, tendons, and blood vessels in your hip, promoting blood circulation and reducing pain. And of course, massage will also relax you and improve your mental wellbeing.
Physical Fitness
The last component of preventing hip pain is becoming physically fit. Whether you’ve recovered from surgery and want to get stronger or you want to prevent hip injuries while running, we can help. If you’re overweight, those excess pounds can put a strain on your hips.
Our physical fitness team of personal trainers can help develop an exercise and weight loss regimen tailored to you that reduces your hip pain and helps prevent it from returning in the future. We will also focus on injury prevention, if a sports injury or running injury is what brought you through our doors.
The entire team at Cima Health works together to provide you with coordinated care and restorative, lifelong solutions.
See What Our Patients Are Saying
Book an Appointment
Hip pain can make it hard to get around to do your activities of daily living like walking the dog, playing with your kids, and impossible to go out for your morning run. If you’re suffering from hip pain, book an appointment today. One of our chiropractors will do a comprehensive examination to get to the root cause of your pain and develop an integrative plan of care to offer pain relief and inspire you to achieve whole-body wellness.
