​Factors That Can Cause Hip Pain

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There are a number of causes for your hip pain, some of them you can help prevent by eliminating them from your life or limiting them as much as possible. Some of these causes include:

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• Previous injury to the hip, back and groin

• Your age

• Certain medical conditions that can cause changes to the bony architecture or cause joint disruption

• Long term use of certain medications whether they are taken orally or applied locally to the joint e.g. local cortisone injections

• Poor diet and lifestyle without enough calcium and vitamin D

• Not doing enough physical exercise to which strengthens the bones and surrounding muscles

• Being overweight puts more pressure on your joints and is not good for your overall health in general

• Repetitive heavy lifting with poor posture

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Common Hip Complaints

 

The more common conditions of the hip are mostly musculoskeletal in nature, and there can be improvement in symptomatology with chiropractic care. Some of these common conditions include:

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• Osteoarthritis

• Bursitis

• Hip flexor strains

• Snapping hip syndrome

• Referral from low back pain

• Hip impingement syndrome

• Osteitis pubis

• Adductor muscle strains

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These conditions on their own can usually be treated with chiropractic treatment, but it does depend on a number of factors for successful treatment.

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It is best if you do have hip, groin, buttock or any other pain to come in for a consultation. There are a number of benefits for early detection and possible treatment. These include but aren’t limited to a decrease in the amount of soft tissue that is damaged, decrease in the amount of musculoskeletal compensation occurring, ability to correct the issue faster, and others.

 

Prevention

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Some simple advice to help prevent hip pain, include:

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• Correct posture

• Before physical activity warming up correctly and making sure you utilise proper technique

• If you feel even a little bit of pain, make sure that you get it checked out, and corrected properly because it can take longer to heal, there is a greater chance of it becoming a chronic issue and more likely to reoccur, with this reoccurrence usually more severe, more frequent and of a longer duration

• If you have any inflammation use cold therapy, especially icepacks which decrease the rate of inflammation which decreases pain and enhances healing

• Swimming, which is very good for hip pain due to it being a non weight-bearing exercise decreasing the stress on the joints and muscles

• Losing weight

• Keeping a regular appointment so that your condition is consistently getting checked for improvement or setback

 

Treating Your Hip Pain

 

There are a multitude of factors that can cause your hip pain that are specific to each person, making your treatment specific from another person who presents with the same symptoms as you. If the condition that you have is musculoskeletal in origin and is something that we can treat, a generalised approach to treatment is:

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• Firstly our main aim is to reduce pain and inflammation around the joint and area. We concentrate mainly on this area first so we can then start on the cause of the pain as quickly as possible. During this stage of treatment we are trying to release the muscles and their trigger points, provide specific adjustments to movement restrictions in the joint and as well as this give lifestyle advice to help aid in the healing process.

• Our next step is more global in regards to your pain where we begin correcting muscle firing patterns, in which we try to integrate exercises to aid in increasing the strength and flexibility of the hip joint and the entire region

• The last progression is correction of the entire body where we try to correct the poor body biomechanics as a preventative measure to ensure that there is as little chance of reoccurrence as possible. This part in treatment is the most important due to the fact that if it’s not being corrected then there is likely going to be a relapse, usually a lot worse than before.

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