Hip Pain: Causes and Cures

 

Today we will be looking at hip pain, causes and cures. 

Anatomy of the Hip

All right, first let’s go over what really consists of or makes up the hip. If you look at a model of the skeleton, you’ll see what is called the hip joint itself. This is where the ball and socket of your leg (at the top of your femur) fits into a little cup in the hip bone and creates what is called the hip joint. 

Now the hip, really, in itself consists of several parts combined. You have the sacroiliac, which is the sacrum (a bone in your lower back and pelvis at the base of your spine which connects to your hips) and the ilium (the hip bones at the widest point where they flare out from your pelvis); and that sacroiliac joint is where the two bones connect. And then you have the femur, and you have the little ball and socket joint. Well, it’s actually not a little joint. It’s a big joint. So that is the hip in its entirety.

Now the hip is made up, of course, of the cartilage that holds it together—the bones that I just went over, the sacrum, the ilium, and the femur. 

And then you have all the muscles that make up the hip. You have the piriformis (which runs from your spine to the top of your femur). You have the muscles in the back of the thigh, which are called the hamstrings. You have the internal muscles of the thigh; you have the front muscles, or the quadriceps; and then you have the side muscles, referred to as the iliotibial band (which goes from the outside of your hips, down the outside of your thigh, and ends at the top of your shinbone). That is the entirety of the hip joint and the hip itself.

Common Causes of Hip Pain

So causes of hip pain can be due to inactivity. Basically, sitting too much or sitting a lot, injuries which could be trips and falls, and auto accidents. It could be any kind of injury that a person might have. One of the ones that is hardest to treat is auto accidents. For example, when a person is hit from behind, or I guess hit from the front too, their legs will jam into the firewall. That actually can create a kind of a jamming situation where the hip joint can get kind of jammed up and create a lot of problems with this joint itself, knocking this SI joint (the sacroiliac joint) out of alignment. So auto accidents can be a toughie to help people get over.

I once treated a patient, well, I’ve treated a few patients over the years that had a side impact, somebody hit them from the side, and of course that causes a lot of injury to that thigh. That was a hard injury to take care of in one person or the one patient I’m thinking of in particular. So those are various things that can cause some hip pain. 

Other things that can cause problems are bad shoes and a bad posture. This actually relates back to how your spine has been injured in most cases, due to injuries, trips, auto accidents, inactivity, and so on and so forth. These are easily handled—like bad shoes, well, you get good shoes.

Cures for Hip Pain

Chiropractic Adjustments

All right, so let’s go over some cures for hip pain. First, there are chiropractic adjustments. So when the spine gets out of alignment; when the lumbar vertebrae twist to the left or to the right; when the sacroiliac joint doesn’t function properly, you have the sacrum and the ilium; when that’s out of alignment, that can create problems with this whole hip. When your foot gets out of alignment, it can cause problems up the whole chain and cause you to start walking funny and create problems with the whole hip and lumbar spine and sacroiliac.

I actually do adjustments of the spine, the sacroiliac, of the hip joint itself, the knee, and the foot. So chiropractic adjustments are a very important part of a cure.

Pressure Point Therapy

Then there’s also pressure point therapy, which helps to restore the normal tone of the muscles that surround the whole hip area. You have the muscles in the back, you have the gluteal muscles, you have the piriformis, you have the muscles in the back of the thigh, front of the thigh, inside the thigh, outside the thigh, all those muscles.

When they get tight and sore and shortened, it can create a bunch of problems for the way that your hips move. So getting pressure point therapy using thumb or finger pressure can really assist in curing hip pain.

Specific Exercises

Next thing is exercises, actually doing exercises, actually getting out and walking, or just moving your back, or doing weightlifting exercises can really help physical therapy. A physical therapist can help in regards to curing hip pain. They can help with the core muscle strength. They can help balance out some of those muscles by doing specific exercises.

You can also Google that, or search on YouTube, and find various core strengthening exercises that you can do. For sure with hip pain, if you’re having pain, I encourage you to get chiropractic adjustments, seek out chiropractic help, and also get some physical therapy.

Orthotics

And lastly, the next thing is orthotics. Now, there are three arches of your foot. The main one is the inner arch on your sole. When that drops down, it creates a problem where your foot actually starts to change the way it should articulate with the whole set of bones down there. Then it twists the knee, then it twists the hip joint itself, and then it starts to affect the spine, the sacroiliac, and the lumbar spine.So having a foot problem can create problems all the way up. If you have collapsed arches (you know it too when you have collapsed arches, you can actually see it), you start to develop foot pain. There is a cure for that, or a way to help it, and that’s to get custom made orthotics. And we actually do have a foot level or a scanning machine, it’s a laser scanner that we can use to scan your feet, identify the arches that need support, and actually have some custom made orthotics for you.

So there’s the cures for hip pain and certainly chiropractic really helps in that area; the pressure points, exercises, physical therapy, and orthotics. I really would recommend that you get some help for that problem. So there are the various cures for hip pain.

Let Mattingly Chiropractic Help Relieve Your Hip Pain

Now what I’d like to offer you is a chance to come into the office for a complementary pressure point therapy treatment. And in this treatment, I’ll sit down with you and do a short consultation. Then, I’ll do some pressure points on your lower back, down the glutes and legs, and so on and so forth. We can really take a look at what is going on with your spine that’s causing your hip pain. 

Please give our office a call at (314) 635-1008. We look forward to helping you feel better again with chiropractic adjustments and pressure point therapy.