Hip Pain Conditions
Exploring Hip Conditions and Natural Treatments
Welcome to an in-depth exploration of what causes hip pain and how to treat hip pain naturally. Your hips play a crucial role in your mobility and overall health, let alone getting you from point A to point B. Sometimes, however, they may experience issues. This guide aims to provide you with professional insights and natural remedies for hip pain, to keep your hips healthy and functioning optimally.
Understanding Osteoarthritis: Osteoarthritis of the hip is a degenerative joint disease where the cartilage cushioning the ends of the bones in your hip joint deteriorates over time. This leads to bones rubbing against each other, causing pain, swelling, and decreased mobility. Over time, the condition can worsen, causing damage to bones surfaces themselves, leading to chronic pain and a significant impact on daily activities.
Why It Happens: The primary cause is the natural ageing process, but other factors include obesity, joint injuries, and prolonged periods of inactivity, such as sitting for long hours. These factors contribute to the tightness of hip muscles, which force the hip bone into the pelvis, exacerbating the wear and tear on the joint cartilage. In fact, in clinical practice, the most common cause of osteoarthritis in the patients I see, is tight, shortened muscles, resulting in the two joint surfaces being jammed together. These muscles can be the hip flexors, hamstring, quadriceps, gluteals and even the adductor muscles.
Solution: Implementing stretching routines to alleviate muscle tightness is our #1 priority to get long term results and prevent further exacerbation. To assist the body to heal the current damage, using topical treatments to support joint health, and employing the use of a therapeutic ultrasound to promote healing and reduce pain is also extremely wise. More details on this in the treatment section.
Understanding Bursitis: Trochanteric (hip) bursitis is the inflammation of the bursa, small fluid-filled sacs that cushion the tendons and muscles from constant movement over the bones surrounding your hip joint. When these bursae become inflamed, they swell and cause significant pain and discomfort, particularly when moving the hip. The body enlarges the bursa when there is a lot of activity in the area, to prevent fraying of the tendon. Side effect of that enlargement is unfortunately discomfort, but this is just a signpost to let us know that there is something wrong in the area.
Why It Happens: Bursitis is often caused by repetitive motions or positions that put pressure on the bursae around the hip. Tight muscles can also contribute by increasing pressure on the bursae, leading to inflammation and pain.
Solution: The first step here is to avoid continual aggravation of the bursa, so avoid laying on that side at night time. Secondly, address muscle tightness through stretching, dry needling or cupping and manage inflammation with topical treatments like Kirofix® Injury Relief Lotion, the therapeutic ultrasound and ice therapy.
Understanding Hip Fractures: A hip fracture is a break in the upper quarter of the femur (thigh bone). It is a serious injury, especially common among older adults with osteoporosis. A hip fracture typically requires surgery and physical therapy to recover fully.
Why It Happens: The main causes include falls, high-impact trauma, or weakening of the bones due to osteoporosis or other conditions that decrease bone density.
Solution: Support bone healing with specialised Bone Aid Relief cream and an oral bone relief homeopathic spray, which encourages bone healing from the outside and inside respectively.
Understanding Hip Labral Tears: A hip labral tear involves a tear in the labrum, the ring of cartilage that follows the outside rim of the socket of your hip joint. The labrum acts as a seal and helps keep the ball of the hip joint in place. The pain from this injury is felt deep inside the hip and can't be made worse by poking or prodding the area. It does however get worse with extremes of hip movement, especially when weight bearing.
Why It Happens: Labral tears can occur from trauma, structural abnormalities, or repetitive motions, such as those found in certain sports or physical activities. Although most incidences are obvious, sometimes the repetitive nature of ones work can cause this condition to creep up on someone, without an obvious event. These tears can lead to pain, a catching sensation, and hip instability.
Solution: At home you can help speed up the recovery by using the Kirofix® Injury Relief Lotion and the therapeutic ultrasound. Together they provide the building blocks and energy required to assist the body to heal. If your pain levels are significant, add Bone Aid Relief Cream to the mix as the active ingredients are great at reducing pain. Once the labrum begins healing and the pain levels have significantly subsided, some gentle stretching is of great benefit too, to open up the joint to also enhance healing.
Understanding Tendonitis: Hip tendonitis is the inflammation or irritation of the tendons around the hip joint. Tendons are the thick cords that attach muscle to bone, and when they become inflamed, they can cause pain and tenderness around the hip.
Why It Happens: Tendonitis is often caused by repetitive stress or overuse, especially in activities that involve running, jumping, or sudden movements. It can also result from poor biomechanics or muscular imbalances. Muscular imbalances are common around the hip, due to the copious amount of time we all spend sitting during the day. Sitting causes a shortening of the hip flexors, found at the front of the hip.
Solution: Rest the area as best you can and spent time reducing inflammation using the Kirofix® Injury Relief Lotion and the therapeutic ultrasound. More details on this to follow.
Understanding Hip Impingement:
Hip impingement, or femoro-acetabular impingement (FAI), occurs when the bones of the hip are abnormally shaped and do not fit together perfectly. This results in the bones rubbing against each other during movement, leading to damage to the joint and pain. There are different varieties of this condition, depending on where the abnormality occurs. When the socket aspect of the joint is abnormally shaped, it is called pincer, whereas if the ball itself is involved it is referred to as CAM (which is short for camshaft, which is what it looks like), or there can be a combination of both and is literally called combined or mixed. Check out the pic for a visual on these different types.
Why It Happens: FAI can be due to congenital abnormalities (born with it), injuries or develop over time due to repetitive movements that cause the ball and socket of the hip to grind. This condition limits range of motion and can lead to osteoarthritis if not addressed.
Solution: Ensuring the muscles around the hip joint are flexible will help prevent the uneven joint surfaces from rubbing together too much. Regular stretching and alignment of hip muscles, combined with using the Trio of Creams topically and the therapeutic ultrasound on the pulsed setting is the best way to assist your body with this condition.
Understanding Snapping Hip Syndrome: Snapping hip syndrome is characterised by a snapping sensation or sound in the hip, which can be caused by a tendon or muscle sliding over a bone. This snapping can occur on the inside (groin area) or outside of the hip, depending on which muscle and tendon is involved.
Why It Happens: This condition often arises from tight tendons or muscles that snap over bony structures in the hip. It is commonly seen in athletes or dancers who perform repetitive hip movements.
Solution: Relax muscles with stretching and cupping techniques, and reduce inflammation with Kirofix® Injury Relief Lotion and the therapeutic ultrasound. This condition sometimes requires a consultation with a Chiro, Osteo or Physio to move the tendon into a better position to prevent the snapping and wear on the tendon from continuing to happen.
Understanding Hip Dysplasia: Hip dysplasia is a congenital or developmental condition where the hip socket does not fully cover the ball portion of the femur (upper thighbone). This can lead to hip dislocation and arthritis if left untreated.
Why It Happens: Hip dysplasia can be present at birth or develop in early childhood. Genetic factors, as well as certain positioning of the baby in the womb, can increase the risk.
Solution: Depending on the severity of the condition, bracing or surgery may be required. It is advisable to seek professional help, if you haven't already done so. At home you can assist your body by using the trio of creams, the cupping set to alleviate muscles tightness and the Therapeutic Ultrasound to reduce inflammation. A great way to support good hip function. Read more about these options in the next section.
Purpose: Alleviate muscle tightness, improve joint flexibility and decrease joint wear and tear. Great for osteoarthritis, tendonitis, bursitis, snapping hip and hip impingement, as well as general hip tightness.
Instructions: Regularly stretch hip flexors, hamstrings, quadriceps, adductors, abductors and glutes. Gentle stretching is also beneficial for hip labral tears. Avoid stretching if you have experienced a recent fracture, until the fracture has healed. Check out the images below for how to do each stretch.
Check out our trio of creams to cover all bases, including bones, nerves, ligaments, tendons, muscles, capsules, discs, bursae, cartilage, inflammation, pain and circulation, they've got you covered!
Kirofix® Injury Relief Lotion / Trauma Relief Cream – these two products are one and the same, they just come in different sizes. The active ingredients provide the building blocks for all soft tissues, ligaments, tendons, muscles, capsules, cartilage, discs and bursae. As a result it is brilliant for bursitis, tendonitis, torn muscles, arthritis and is amazing at helping the body to reduce inflammation and therefore pain.
Bone Aid Relief Cream – the active ingredients assist the body with healing bone, joint and nerve damage. Whether it's a broken bone, bone bruising, a bone spur, nerve pain or neuropathy, bone aid relief has it all under control. It is extremely helpful in reducing pain as well as providing the building blocks for bone and nerve repair.
Heativate® Relief Cream – the active ingredients in this orange tinged cream have been specifically chosen to increase circulation. For healing to take place the body needs two very important things. The first are the building blocks that the body uses to repair damaged tissues (Bone Aid Relief Cream and Kirofix® have this in spades) and the second is adequate blood flow for delivering those building blocks to the area that needs them (that’s Heativate®’s role). The beauty of this product is the more active you are, the harder it works for you. Sitting on the couch you may only notice the pain relieving benefits, but if you get up and start doing housework or a gym workout, or even eat a hot curry, you’ll feel the area heat up as more blood flow is delivered to the underlying tissues.
Purpose: Provides targeted high frequency sound waves to assist the body in accelerating the healing process for osteoarthritis, bursitis, tendonitis, and other hip conditions. Think of it as adding vibrational energy to the damaged cells under the surface of the skin, right where the healing vibes are needed.
Instructions: Apply relevant creams (Bone Aid, Trauma Relief/Kirofix®) followed by ultrasound gel. Use the ultrasound device on a pulsed setting for 6-8 minutes. Reapply creams after the treatment and add the Heativate® Relief Cream to aid with ongoing supply of the building blocks and to increase blood flow to deliver those building blocks to the local area for maximum healing.
Purpose: Manage inflammation, particularly useful for trochanteric (hip) bursitis if you don't own a Therapeutic Ultrasound.
Instructions: Although a packet of frozen peas has often been the go to, using a wrap-on ice pack to ice outer aspect of the hip (where the pain is) is a more effective option. The compression afforded by the wrap on ice pack gives much more effective results. Leave the ice pack on the hip for 10 minutes and then remove for 10 minutes and continue this for 4 applications.
Please note: if you have a therapeutic ultrasound, there is no need to do the icing, the therapeutic ultrasound is significantly more effective in eliminating trochanteric bursitis.
The muscles we are addressing with the below techniques include the hip flexors, glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, adductors (groin muscles) and abductors (muscles on the outer aspect of the hip). The most common and easiest ways to alleviate muscle tightness is to stretch (details above), use a foam roller or receive a massage. Also remember that tight muscles need magnesium. Our creams all contain magnesium, which your muscles will love. We also have a great Bath Soak, called SOulSoak which provides, not only a massive hit of magnesium, but over 80 essential elements and minerals required for healthy bodily function. Even just soaking your feet in a footspa with SOulSoak can allow for a nutrition infusion into your body.
Other techniques that can assist with relaxing the tight muscles are:
Cupping: Break down muscle adhesions and release tension using a premium vacuum cupping set. The best thing about this set is it is simple and easy to use at home. Giving you professional results in your own home and for a fraction of the cost of seeing a practitioner. Using cupping for your your hip area is easier than you realise and gives great relief.
Dry Needling: Sadly, this one requires a consultation. It is, however, extremely effective in alleviating tight muscles causing bursitis, osteoarthritis and snapping hip syndrome and much more around the hip. With dry needling, unlike acupuncture, the needles are specifically placed into the muscle where there is a build up of lactic acid, the waste product of muscle movement. The body recognises the needles as foreign and sends in an army of blood cells to mount a defence, in the process, the lactic acid is washed out of the muscles, leaving them free of tension.
Bone Aid Relief Cream: The active ingredients of this topical cream have been selected for their ability to aid the body in repairing bone and ease nerve pain. Used topically over the fracture site (or site of bone spur, bruising or nerve pain), the building blocks required for bone repair are delivered directly to where they are needed most.
Ultra Bone Aid Relief Spray: This is a homeopathic spray that works internally to speed up bone repair, particularly useful for hip fractures.
Instructions: Used together these Bone Aid Repair Duo provides comprehensive bone healing support.
Your hips are essential for your mobility and overall well-being. By incorporating these natural remedies and seeking professional advice when needed, you can maintain healthy hips and enjoy an active lifestyle. Always consider a holistic approach, looking at how other parts of your body, like feet and knees, might affect your hip health. If in doubt, consult with a healthcare professional for personalised advice and treatment. Stay proactive about your hip health and keep moving with confidence!