Are You Experiencing Hip or Joint Pain?
Chiropractic Care for Hip and Joint Pain
People often associate chiropractic care with the spine. Many people don’t realize chiropractors also work on hips and other joints. These are crucial parts of the skeletal-muscular system. Joints allow the body to have flexible movement. Without our joints, we couldn’t move, lift, bend, or enjoy flexibility.
Just like the spine, arms, and legs, joints are susceptible to inflammation, tightness, pinched nerves, and misalignment. Overexertion, injury, or stress on the hips and other joints can strain the tendons, ligaments, muscles, and soft tissues surrounding them.
When the hip joint is out of alignment, it can cause pain throughout the body. Sometimes, when a person experiences leg pain or back pain, the problem is really with the hip. Similarly, hip pain is sometimes caused by a spine that is out of alignment, or by inflammation of the sciatic nerve.
Causes of Hip Pain
Hip pain can have many causes. Apart from injuries and underlying diseases, hips can also hurt from:
Pain in Other Joints
While the hip is a large joint, the smaller joints are just as important to mobility, functioning, and well-being.
All joints can become painful due to injury, overexertion, swelling, pinched nerves, strains, and stress.
Arthritis is a common issue in hips and other joints. So is bursitis – inflammation in the fluid sack around the joint; and tendinitis – inflammation of the tendon that connects muscles to bones. When a joint is stressed, nerves can become impinged and soft tissue can also be irritated.
Joint pain can be very uncomfortable and can limit mobility. The constant need to move hips and joints, just getting through the day, makes it difficult for them to rest and heal.
Pain Signals a Problem
As with any other pain in the body, hip and joint pain is a signal that something is not right. Too often, people simply endure joint pain, thinking they are stuck with it. But joint pain should not be ignored. Not only can chiropractic care help to bring relief for joint pain. But also, chiropractic care can also help to prevent joint pain from worsening or affecting other areas of the body.
Chiropractic Therapies for Hips and Joints
Many people have been surprised to discover how much chiropractic care can help with hip and joint pain. Chiropractic care can help with all areas of the skeletal-muscular and nervous systems, from the spine, outward to the extremities. This includes hips and joints.
The chiropractor will examine the problem area to find the source of the irritation. Because pain in one joint might be caused by problems in another area, or might affect other bones, joints, muscles, and nerves, chiropractic care includes looking at the whole skeletal-muscular and nervous systems.
Your chiropractor can use a combination of therapies, such as manipulation, range of motion exercises, soft tissue therapy, heat and ice, as well as posture and lifestyle coaching. The goal of chiropractic care is to help relieve pressure from injured areas, to allow the body to heal naturally. Your chiropractor will also focus on ways to reduce pain and to help restore mobility. Chiropractic care will also focus on helping you improve your posture, flexibility, and other lifestyle issues, such as nutrition and stress, that affect your hips and joints.