Today’s topic is hip pain. So when we talk about hip pain, just like the rest of the human body, there are a lot of components or variables that contribute. When we hear hip pain, it instantly becomes a concern. Not just because of the suffering pain can put someone through but when someone says ‘hip’, that can be from a lot of variable locations of the person. Some people mean low back, sacroiliac pain, some mean psoas muscle, some mean groin pain, while others mean the actual ball and socket of the hip itself.
As stated before when someone uses ‘hip’ pain, that is a blanket statement. Even in the healthcare world many practitioners use this to cover a multitude of areas. And as a chiropractor in San Diego, it is not uncommon at all for that to be the case with patients coming from other healthcare professionals.
If you are having hip pain, there are a series of steps that need to be taken to get you on the right track and regain your life back.
The first step is identifying not what is hip pain itself, but rather what is YOUR hip pain specifically. Everyone’s hip pain is different styles of pain, different areas, different causes. So it is crucial to first identify your hip pain. If all relates back to what we discussed initially as to is it your low back, sacroiliac, psoas, etc. Once we know where it is, we get a step closer to identifying if we can help or not. But before we move forward we want to hear how you got to this point. This is where you walk us through what happened, how it happened, how it feels, describe the pain, describe the sensations, describe the motions hurt more than others, and more.
To be able to be accurate in our ability on whether we can help or not, we need to dig a little bit deeper. We need to perform what is known as an examination. This is where we put your body through a series of specific movements to give us feedback as to what is going on. This will allow us to really hone in on if it is coming from the low back, the psoas, the SI joint, the femoral head, or other areas.
Once we have these two components narrowed down, we want to confirm our suspicions through an x-rays. We perform digital x-rays in our office. This allows us to see exactly what’s going on inside of your body. Is there a structural change, a mechanical stressor, or something underlying that is causing these pains in your hip. There is a big difference between a structural issue that can create mechanical problems. Versus a mechanical issue that has created structure changes. Or are they two separate things all together.
Back to the hip pain. When we have hip pain, it can be related to what we call camming. It is where we bend your hip which should allow your thigh to get to 90 degrees prior to lateral movement. It can be more of an SI (sacroiliac) joint issue if more walking or sitting is the cause. Hip pain can be a lot of different things. As your Gonstead chiropractor in San Diego, we specialize in these pains in hips day in and day out. Whether you are a 3 month old, a 99 or 100 year old, or maybe somewhere in between those ages. We have seen low back pain or hip pain in a lot of these age groups and we have helped tremendously for each of those individuals.
Our goal is to inform you of what is going on at first. Find out what is going on. So we can give you the best recommendations on the course of care that is right for you. We will also let you know if it is something that we can help out with, however if not we will 100% let you know that as well. That is one thing that sets us apart from others. We do not shy away from letting you know yes we can help, no we cannot help with your hip pain.
You will be the second person to know if it is beyond what we can help out with, as we will be the first as your family chiropractor. At the end of the day it is all about getting you back to your daily life, living life, thriving in life, not just surviving life.