Hip Pain: Evaluate and eliminate your hip pain

Those who suffer from hip pain know how truly excruciating it can be. The hip joint, a ball-in-socket joint comprising of the femur, the head of which represents the ball, and the hip socket, is subject to much wear and tear during everyday use, thus explaining the relatively common nature of hip pain. An injury to this joint, or the area around this joint, can cause excruciating hip pain and can make simple everyday tasks like standing or walking virtually impossible.

First, ask yourself these three questions to make sure you know what you’re looking for:

– Is your pain in or near the red area is shown in the picture?

-If not, then you might want to be read up on the human anatomy.

• Does the pain feel like it is caused by tissue or bone?
• Does the hip pain only happen at certain times or in certain positions?

Now, let’s break it down a bit further. Make a note if any of the following are true:

• You have sharp pains in your hips during quick muscle movements (i.e. jumping or changing direction).
• Your hip hurts while running, cycling, sitting, squatting, etc.
• There is a pain in your hip when you move your knee in a circular motion.
• There is a pain in your hip at some other time.

If any of the following are true, then guess what? You’ve got hip pain.

 

Causes of Hip Pain—There’s a reason for it.

Do you have a health problem?

Were you fighting crime with Batman last night?

Did you get hurt cleaning your bathroom?

The thing about hip pain is that there are many things that can cause it. It could be the result of health problems that have evolved over time or the result of one single event.

Here are the most common causes of hip pain:

• Overloading the muscle tissue during explosive movements
• Poor hip mobility or body mechanics
• Collisions: falling, car accident, trampled by a reindeer
• Normal wear and tear—it gets everyone at some point

Here are some more specific causes for the hip pain to help you out.

It’s a real pain to pinpoint it, I know. Luckily, we have the answers.

 

Hip Pain Relief—Let’s fix you up.

Now it’s time to address your hip pain head-on.

Here’s a fact: Most people have problems with hip pain because of poor hip mobility, body mechanics, and/or muscle weakness.

All of these things are, for the most part, preventable which makes the fact that they happen so frequently kind of dumb.

Here is another fact that explains a lot:

• Most people are too lazy to make an effort to relieve their pain. They’d rather suffer through it until the day they die than actually take action to fix it.

If you’ve read this far and didn’t just skip to this section of the page, I’ll give you some credit. You’ve done a whole lot more to fix your pain than most people would.

If you’re in your 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, or 100’s, don’t just tell yourself that “your body falls apart as you get older.”

While that may be true, the second you let that determine the rest of your life, the game is over for you.  The same thing goes for anyone that’s younger.

I know two types of people in the 50+ crowd.

There are those who are strong and healthy and there are the ones who choose to hit up their favorite fast food restaurant 5 times a week, and guess what?

The strong and healthy ones are freaking awesome, and the others are typically a pain to deal with.

Anyway, this is the part where I tell you to pony up and do something about your hip pain regardless of your age or physical abilities.

Your shining knight/beautiful princess isn’t going to bust down the doors of pain and save your hips. This one’s up to you.

So, jump off the ship of complacency and take action. Now.

Informational Video:

We’re going to run through some common hip pain symptoms in a moment.

But before you jump into any form of hip pain treatment, you need to make sure that the problem is really with your hips.

It wouldn’t you any good to cut off your arm if the real problem was a toothache.

So, let’s make sure the problem is with your hips before taking action to address it.

First, take a look at your own symptoms, so you can make educated comparisons with the symptoms that are commonly associated with hip pain.

 

Hip Pain Symptoms: Identify your own Symptoms

Where is your pain?

Look at the pictures and make sure that your pain is in, or near the area highlighted in red.
If your pain matches up, just make a mental note of where it hurts.

Your hip pain may be in a single joint or it may span the length of an entire muscle.  It can go as high as your belly button and as low as your knees on the front, back, and sides of your body.

 

When does it hurt?

Are there specific things that cause your hip to start hurting or things that make the pain worse?

 

What’s your pain feel like?

Does it feel like your pain is caused by bone or tissue (i.e. muscle, tendons, ligaments)? Does the pain occur suddenly or is it continuous?

 

Compare your Hip Pain Symptoms

Now, take your problems and start looking for similarities with these hip pain symptoms. Here’s a list of common symptoms that highlight potential problems with your hips:

• Sharp pains during quick muscle movements. This means it hurts while:
  • Sprinting
  • Changing direction
  • Kicking, etc.
• Continuous pain in your hips while sitting in a chair or lying down.
• Pain when your leg is rotated.
  • Try moving your knee in large circular motions. Does that cause pain?
• Pain when pressure is applied to the area. Try gently pressing down on the painful area.
• Pain during impact exercises.
  • Does it hurt if you jump several times or after you go for a long run?
• Pain that runs from your hip to your knee. Does the pain run down your leg?
• Difficulty moving your leg into certain positions.
  • You may have flexibility issues resulting from muscle tightness.
• Do you have pain in your buttocks, groin area, lower back or on your sides?

Now that you’ve made the comparison between your own symptoms and the list of common hip pain symptoms, did you find any that match up?

If you did, the next step is going to be determining exactly what is causing your hip pain.

From there, you can start doing a bit of hip pain treatment to fix the problems. Then, you’ll be on your way to pain-free living—that’s the goal anyway.

Just remember, knowing what is wrong is worthless if you don’t take action to fix the pain. As always, it’s up to you.

 

Hip Pain Causes: Figure out what’s causing your pain

Often, hip pain is associated with older people, and it does indeed affect the elderly. However, hip pain can affect anyone at any age, even children. The overarching effects of hip pain are a result of the numerous and varying causes of hip pain. Ailments from arthritis to snapping hip syndrome can cause hip pain. The hip joint itself could be injured, or perhaps the area surrounding the hip joint, there are numerous possible sources of hip pain. Though the sheer number of causes of hip pain can render hip pain difficult to diagnose, most treatments, even the most invasive, are fairly straightforward and pain-free.

Let’s jump straight into this with details. Here are the main hip pain causes:

 

Muscle Overloading

It’s exactly what it sounds like. Too much stress is placed on your hip muscles causing them to overstretch.

This leads to tears in the muscle tissue. It’s frequently caused by sprinting, jumping, sneezing, and lifting things incorrectly.

Hip injuries caused by overloading:

• Hip Flexor Pain—front of hip
• IT Band Pain—side of hip

 

Wear and Tear

It gets to all of us at some point, but it can be combated quite effectively.

Cartilage deteriorates, muscles tear, and bones crack.

The problems associated with normal wear and tear are made worse by muscle weakness, obesity, and poor body mechanics. Wear and tear are caused by life in general, as well as, repetitive motion exercises and poor body mechanics.

Hip injuries caused by wear & tear:

• Stress fractures
• Arthritis
• Bursitis
• Tendonitis

 

Mobility Problems

These include joint restrictions, soft tissue restrictions, tight muscles, and problems with your range of motion. Basically, your mobility is how well your body is able to move around.

The best way to keep your body functioning problem-free is to by performing regular maintenance on the individual parts.

 

Obesity

Obesity sucks. I have close friends and relatives who are overweight and I hate watching their lives be affected by it.

Carrying around extra body fat increases wear and tear on your body.

It can also cause significant mobility issues if it limits a person’s ability to do things.

If you have a machine that doesn’t move for a year or two it usually has problems, your body isn’t any different.

Obesity isn’t usually the primary cause of hip pain.

Instead, it just accelerates the wear & tear which actually cause the hip pain.

 

Muscle Weakness

When was the last time you picked up something heavy?

If your body is too weak to maintain healthy positions, it will assume positions where excessive stress is placed on your muscle tissue, ligaments, and joints.

For example:

If you have hip pain running, your body is probably trying to compensate for muscle imbalances or weakness.

Muscular issues frequently cause poor running mechanics which lead to hip pain, shin splints, knee pain, and other types of pain.

The bottom line:

Everyone needs to consistently do some form of strength training, regardless of your age or gender.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to be lifting giant boulders, but you should at least be able to move something that is your own body weight.

The awesome thing about getting stronger is that it just takes one decision. You just have to decide to pick up something heavy and do it correctly.

 

Poor Body Mechanics

Think about the way you move your body.

• How do you pick up heavy things?
• How are you sitting right now while reading this?
• How do you run?

Poor body mechanics cause hip pain. The good thing is that they’re pretty easy to fix.

Now that you’ve evaluated these hip pain causes, you just need to know what to do.

Then consciously and consistently do it.

 

Hip Pain Treatment

Anti-inflammatory medications are commonly prescribed, as are cortisone shots. In more serious cases, repair surgeries involving plates and screws may be called for, and in the most serious cases of hip pain, hip replacements will be authorized. However, numerous advances in medical technology have even made the hip replacement a fairly simple procedure. Further, even though hip pain is relatively difficult to diagnose, the specific location of the pain gives vital information to diagnosing the cause of the pain. Unfortunately, there are cases where the cause of hip pain cannot be treated, in such cases, physical therapy is often used to ameliorate the pain.

As with many types of pain, a lot of people have the inclination to not call a doctor and attempt to diagnose, treat, or even ignore the problem, often treating with repeated doses of over-the-counter painkillers. If you choose to follow this path, take the recommended amount of pain relievers, try to stay on the hip, apply ice and, if possible, heat to the hip. Allowing the pain to continue for more than a few days, however, poses long-term, serious risks to health.

 

Hip Pain Relief: Time to Treat Your Pain

You and I are going to focus on hip pain treatments that will allow you to avoid hospital operating rooms.

In order to permanently relieve your pain, you first need to do two things:

• Realize that your body needs consistent maintenance in order to function pain-free.
• Motivate yourself to relieve your pain.

If you are ready, it is time to get you some hip pain relief…

R.I.C.E.

The rest, ice, compress and elevate process should be used to reduce swelling when treating new muscle injuries. If your problem is not a fresh muscle injury, check the other treatments. The R.I.C.E. treatment is pretty simple, here’s what it is:

• Rest

  Take things down a notch, but don’t completely stop.

• Ice

  Apply something cold to the painful area to reduce inflammation.

• Compression

  Wrap the injured area tightly, but not too tightly.

• Elevation

  Raise the injured area above your heart (if possible).

 

Mobility Work

The purpose of mobility work is to relieve hip pain by fixing tight muscles, soft tissue restrictions, joint restrictions, and other problems that affect your range of motion. Mobility work essentially makes your body better at moving around.

Types of Mobility Work for hip pain relief:

• Self-myofascial Release (i.e. Foam Rolling)
• Dynamic Stretching
• Static Stretching
• Joint Mobility/Rotational Exercises

For 99% of people, mobility work is the best way to relieve hip pain. If you are in this boat, go get the Free Mobility Pro Toolkit.

 

Correcting Body Mechanics

Do you walk, run, sit, or lift like Quasimodo?

I know I do sometimes.

The problem with poor body mechanics is that they cause mobility problems and muscle imbalances.

Mobility restrictions and imbalances produce pain.

Here are the times when people usually get it wrong:

• Running—heel striking
• Lifting—improper positioning and pulling
• Walking—feet splayed like a duck
• Sitting—shoulders rolled forward

Body mechanics can have a significant effect on your body.

They are easy to mess up, but they are also easy to fix.

Correcting your body mechanics can produce immediate pain relief.

 

Weight Loss

Obesity causes additional stress on your body. This extra stress will produce hip pain. The only way to treat this problem is to lose the extra body fat.

There are only two things you need to lose body fat:

• Proper nutrition

  If cavemen would not know what it is, do not eat it.

• Rigorous Exercise

  Jogging on a treadmill 4 times a week is not enough.

 

Do these two things consistently and you will be feeling better in no time. Do not be afraid of taking action. Don’t let fear prevent you from living life on your terms.

 

Medication

First off, medication is not the long-term solution. Using medication as a crutch for hip pain relief causes other problems.

The best treatment plan is always the sustainable one, but sometimes specific anti-inflammatory drugs can accelerate the recovery process.

If you do choose to take medication to relieve hip pain, try to use a non-steroidal-anti-inflammatory-drug like ibuprofen.

Other pain relief medications, such as aspirin, are antithrombotic and may not be a good choice if you have any type of bruising. Antithrombotic drugs act as blood thinners, making it difficult for blood to clot. If you have to bruise this may prevent your body from healing.

When it comes to medication for pain treatment, you should always check with your doctor before taking anything.

Hip Pain – Side Effects

For instance, if hip pain forces an individual to limp, avoiding treatment not only puts the hip at risk but also the legs and feet that are forced to work abnormally. In addition, overuse of pain medication like ibuprofen or acetaminophen can cause long-term stomach or liver damage. It’s generally recommended to contact a physician if hip pain persists for more than a few days, if hip pain persists even while taking medications, if walking causes discomfort, if pain occurs even when the hip is not working, if you are unable to bend the hip, or if significant swelling occurs on or around the hip area. A physician will be able to diagnose your hip pain quickly and effectively, provide or prescribe proper treatment, and help you end your excruciating hip pain as quickly as possible.