While a healthy spine is important for a stress-free and pain-free life, it’s also essential to have good hip health, as hip pain can be detrimental to your quality of life. Just like our spines, our hips serve many functions for our body, such as assisting in weight-bearing and stability and providing the range of motion for walking and running.
Due to their near-constant use, the hips can suffer injuries or develop painful symptoms that can be extremely frustrating to manage. Luckily, for residents of San Francisco, chiropractic care for hip pain can provide powerful relief while also improving your overall hip and spine health.
What Causes Hip Pain?
Hip pain can originate from many sources, such as postural irregularities, osteoarthritis, inflammation, or injury, and can make performing your day-to-day activities very difficult. Let’s take a deeper look at some of these causes.
Postural Irregularities
While we may usually associate posture with the spine, it also affects the hips, either through direct postural problems relating to the hips themselves or indirect postural issues stemming from the spine. These postural imbalances matter because they can significantly alter the amount of weight or pressure exerted onto one or both of the hips, resulting in hip pain.
Some examples of direct postural irregularities include posterior tilt, anterior tilt, or rotations or twists in the natural positioning of the pelvis, while examples of indirect postural irregularities include lateral spinal shifts and sacroiliac (SI) joint dysfunction.
Referred Pain
You may be surprised to learn that pain originating in different parts of the body can manifest in the hips, as it can be inadvertently transferred through the nervous system. Because the hips are directly below the spinal cord and near the sciatic nerve, the longest and thickest nerve in the body, it’s not unusual for injuries or dysfunctions in the discs, lower back, and SI joints to cause pain that is felt in the hips.
Injury from Trauma
Sudden injuries such as dislocations and fractures can cause pain that lingers long after a majority of the damage from such an injury has healed. This is largely due to nerve damage to parts of the body such as the sciatic nerve. When the sciatic nerve is irritated, a condition called sciatica manifests that often creates painful sensations in the hips and lower extremities.
This is especially true in patients who have not undergone a thorough rehabilitation program to prevent conditions like sciatica from developing.
Injury from Overuse
While not as readily apparent as pain from trauma, overuse can also cause frustrating hip pain. Repetitive activities such as weightlifting, running, and even routine daily activities place stress on the hip and the tissues surrounding it, which can cause wear and tear over time that results in hip pain.
Osteoarthritis and Other Inflammatory Diseases
Inflammatory diseases such as osteoarthritis are a common cause of hip pain, especially among older adults. Osteoarthritis is a degeneration of the cartilage (the strong and flexible connective tissue that prevents bones from rubbing against each other) between the joints.
When the cartilage deteriorates, friction is created between the parts of the hips that are not meant to come into contact with each other. This causes pain and also further deteriorates the joint.
Chiropractic Care for Hip Pain Relief
For a city with a variety of popular recreations like cycling, backpacking, hiking, surfing, and swimming, hip pain can be frustrating for its residents when it sidelines them from being able to engage in the activities they love.
Thankfully, partnering with a chiropractor to receive chiropractic care for hip pain can be a non-invasive, holistic, and effective long-term solution that not only provides swift relief from pain but also improves your spine and hip health.
Chiropractic care can directly address many of the most common causes of hip pain with the following treatments:
| Chiropractic Care for Hip Pain | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cause | Postural and Stability Exercises | Massage Therapy | Pelvic Lifts | Chiropractic Adjustments |
| Postural Irregularities in the Pelvis | O | O | O | O |
| Postural Irregularities in the Spine | O | O | O | |
| Referred Pain | O | O | O | O |
| Injury from Trauma | O | |||
| Injury from Overuse | O | O | ||
| Osteoarthritis | O | O | O | |
Regardless of why you’re experiencing hip pain, the most important thing is to ensure the underlying cause is being addressed, especially if you’re battling chronic pain. Even the best treatments will not have lasting efficacy if the true cause of the pain isn’t identified and addressed.
For example, pelvic tilts will do little if the cause of your hip pain is a postural irregularity stemming from spinal misalignments.
However, not all chiropractors are equipped to proactively resolve your pain—that’s why you need to reach out to one who does.
PostureWorks Gets Rid of Pesky Hip Pain for Good
Here at PostureWorks, we know that hip pain can keep you from enjoying a productive and fulfilling life, which is why we use Chiropractic BioPhysics® (CBP) as the foundation for chiropractic care for hip pain.
With CBP, we’re able to fully analyze your health via biomechanical X-rays and an examination of your entire medical history to identify the root cause of your hip pain. This allows us to develop a treatment strategy utilizing a mixture of postural and stability exercises, massage therapy, chiropractic adjustments, and pelvic lifts that are customized specifically for your needs. You’ll enjoy immediate relief and long-term prevention that will put you back into action and help you stay there.
Contact us today to learn more information on chiropractic care for hip pain or to schedule your appointment with PostureWorks in San Francisco.
Chiropractic BioPhysics®, or CBP, is a deeply researched and results-oriented corrective care technique. CBP-trained chiropractors aim to realign the spine back to health and optimal function. As with all chiropractic care, CBP is conservative, painless, and non-invasive.
