Hip Pain Treatment

In some cases, it may provide significant relief, especially when hip pain is primarily muscular. However, if joint mechanics, posture, or movement patterns are contributing to the issue, Massage Therapy is often most effective when combined with Chiropractic care.

This is why we assess the root cause of your hip pain first, then recommend the most appropriate combination of treatments to help you recover efficiently and prevent the pain from returning.

Hip tightness can stem from a sedentary lifestyle, muscle imbalances, overuse, poor posture, and previous injuries. Tightness can also be neurological, with the brain tightening muscles to prevent injury in muscles that are overloaded or weak. Addressing the tension may involve stretching, strengthening exercises, mobility drills, and lifestyle changes.

Sitting for a period also stretches the glutes, which can cause them to be less active because a stretched muscle is not a strong one. This can create a sensation of tightness, and the brain will prioritize using other muscles to prevent injury. Typically, when this happens, we start to feel pain symptoms in other areas such as our lower backs, as they take on the load from the glutes not doing their job.

Feeling pain? Here’s an exercise to help with tight hips:

To stretch your hips, try these exercises:

1. Couch stretch: Kneel with one knee on the floor and the other foot flat in front, then tilt the pelvis forward slightly.
2. Piriformis stretch: Sit with one leg crossed over the other and gently pull the knee toward the opposite shoulder.
3. Figure four stretch: Lie on your back, cross one ankle over the opposite knee, and pull the non-crossed leg toward your chest.

Perform these stretches regularly to improve hip flexibility and reduce tightness.

Check out our video as we go over the absolute best way to stretch your quads and piriformis.

Most noise associated with joint movements (crepitus) is completely harmless. Hips may click or pop due to nitrogen gas released in the joint, but uncomfortable clicking may be caused by tendons moving over bones or muscle tightness. The latter two (tendons and muscle tightness) can be managed through manual therapy techniques to help the joints and muscles move better.

In more severe cases, clicking can also indicate labral tears, structural issues like hip dysplasia, or advanced arthritis. If your clicking is accompanied by pain or reduced motion, or general discomfort has been increasing over the course of a couple of months, please seek out an assessment with a qualified healthcare practitioner so they can provide a diagnosis and a proper treatment plan to ensure you can reduce the worsening of the issue.

Arthritis is an umbrella term for conditions that result in inflammation in the joints. The most common type of arthritis is osteoarthritis, which is also known as degenerative joint disease (DJD). DJD develops over time and is often noted as an ancillary finding on X-rays—meaning there’s evidence of bony changes to the joints long before pain or other symptoms present. For instance, arthritis in the SI joint can start in your 20s.

Now, many people think of inflammatory arthropathies when they think of arthritis—they think of rheumatoid or psoriatic arthritis, which are both different diseases that can progress to affect the joints. Because all of these get grouped under “arthritis,” the general public views them all the same way.

Diagnosing hip arthritis requires an assessment from a health care provider, in addition to symptoms like pain that improves with rest, stiffness, and reduced motion. The good news is that osteoarthritis does not have the same progression as inflammatory arthropathies and that x-ray findings of degenerative joint disease are poorly correlated with symptoms. So you may have arthritis, according to your x-ray, but that does not mean that you have to live with pain. Motion is one of the best ways of managing pain related to arthritis, making sure that the joints are moving well and within healthy ranges of motion to encourage blood flow and reduce stiffness.

Determining whether you have sciatica requires a comprehensive evaluation by a healthcare professional. Sciatica refers to pain that radiates along the path of the sciatic nerve, which runs from the lower back through the hips and down each leg. Common symptoms of sciatica include sharp or shooting pain, numbness, tingling, or weakness that typically affects one side of the body. Additionally, pain can be worsened in the morning or with specific movements that place an excess load on the damaged nerve. Chiropractic assessments can give you a clear recommendation on how to fix and prevent the recurrence of injury through soft tissue therapy, exercises, and adjustments.

Broadly speaking, sciatica is the irritation of the sciatic nerve. “True Sciatica” results from pressure on the nerve roots that make up the sciatic nerve. Most commonly, this pressure is due to a bulging or herniated lumbar disc. This type of sciatica usually includes symptoms like sharp and electrical pain down the leg, paresthesia (pins & needles) in the leg, numbness, or muscle weakness, and is best addressed by addressing whatever is causing the compression on the nerves in the back.

However, many other conditions can cause sciatica-like symptoms, such as tightness in the piriformis muscle or other glute muscles, trigger points in the lower back muscles, compression in the lower back, or tension in any of the muscles along the path of the sciatic nerve. In this case, the best treatment is to identify the location of the compression and reduce it through targeted soft-tissue treatments such as massage therapy or dry needling, along with movement-based rehabilitation and other appropriate techniques. Massage therapy is particularly effective when sciatic symptoms are driven by muscular tension in the glutes or piriformis rather than disc-related nerve compression.

Diagnosing your symptoms requires an evaluation from a healthcare practitioner. A Chiropractic assessment can give you a clear recommendation on how to fix and prevent injury recurrence through soft tissue therapy, exercises, and adjustments.