Why Does My Hip Hurt?

Each week, I meet patients who complain of and are frustrated by, localized hip pain. The pain tends to be nagging or sharp but always bothersome. Often it does not restrict movement or flexibility, causing the patient to wonder why it hurts so much if they can still use it fully.

Patients may have tried various home remedies like patches; heat, etc with mixed relief, but the pain always seems to come back. The next course of action they usually employ is to go an orthopedist, who often recommends cortisone injections.

Cortisone might help in reducing the pain levels but it rarely addresses the underlying reason why the hip pain or tendinitis developed in the first place. Physical therapy has great success in this area.

The Hip is Affected by Other Joints

The hip joint is a very complex one. It has attachments to the pelvis and the lower back and shares many common muscle groups with both those areas. As a result, any mechanical problems or misalignment with the pelvis or lower back can cause a myriad of compensations within the muscles to connect them to the hip joint. This might pull or push the thigh bone (femur) internally or externally within its hip socket. This in turn can negatively affect the knees and ankles.

Remember the old song, ‘the knee bone is connected to the hip bone…’? It was true. Visualize a misaligned hip and pelvis joint while doing common day-to-day activities such as walking, running, sitting, etc. It causes tugging and pulling of the tendons over the bones resulting in friction and wear and tear at the end of the muscle (tendon) leading to the common condition of “tendinitis/bursitis”.

What Treatment Really Works

So now let’s go back to the original discussion of the treatment of the localized hip pain. The patient who received the cortisone shots may now have decreased pain levels, but they have not really treated the possible causative factor. Therefore it should not surprise you to hear what happens next… That’s right, you guessed it – after a period of time what often happens after receiving a cortisone injection is that the pain comes back again. If you’ve already tried cortisone or some other therapy that hasn’t had lasting results, it is very important to get the pelvis and low back evaluated by a physical therapist before anything else.

If there is any misalignment or asymmetry, the Physical Therapist will help design exercises to get rid of the problem as well as utilize certain manual techniques to help decrease the load on the overworked tendons. In the long run, we typically find the above to be the true underlying cause beneath nagging hip pain. And once it’s fixed, it’s stable again. No more nagging pain!

We are here to help you, your friends, and your family. If you have any nagging pains that are bothering you, please consider a physical therapy evaluation. WE have an excellent success rate.