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Hip pain limits your mobility and often hurts even when you’re trying to rest. Whether the pain is dull or sharp, if it doesn’t improve, you owe it to yourself to learn the cause and get expert care that eases the pain and gets you back into action.
You can have sudden, severe hip pain after an injury, but it doesn’t usually happen that way. Hip pain sneaks up on most people, slowly getting worse over months of repetitive movements.
Our team at Alliance Spine Associates takes time to get to the root cause, then creates customized treatment plans that ease your discomfort and help you return to the activities you enjoy.
A variety of health issues can affect your hips, causing pain and slowing you down. Here, we give you a rundown of the four most common reasons people have hip pain.
Osteoarthritis
After your knees, your hip is the second most likely joint to develop osteoarthritis. This disease develops gradually over the years, as daily activity wears down the cartilage that covers and protects the bones in the joint.
As more cartilage breaks down, the bones become exposed. Then every time you move, bone grates against bone, leading to bone damage, inflammation, pain, and limited movement.
Though hip pain is the primary symptom of osteoarthritis, you may also feel discomfort in your thigh or groin. You may also have pain that radiates to your buttocks or knee and experience a grinding noise in the joint when you walk.
Tendonitis and bursitis
Though these are two separate conditions, they’re grouped together here because they’re both caused by inflammation.
Hip tendonitis (inflamed tendons) usually affects the tendons that flex the joint. The inflammation is caused by overuse injuries, especially in people who enjoy running, bicycling, swimming, and high intensity sports. However, you can also end up with the condition if you suddenly increase the length or intensity of your exercise or training regimen.
Hip bursitis (trochanteric bursitis) causes pain when a traumatic or overuse injury leads to inflammation in a bursa. The bursa is a tiny, fluid-filled sac that reduces friction between the hip bone and other tissues. The pain of hip bursitis is often sharp and worse at night, especially if you lay on the side with the bursitis.
Hip labral tear
The labrum is a ring of cartilage that goes around the hip’s socket, the indented area that holds the rounded part of your upper leg. The cartilage maintains alignment between your hip and leg and allows the leg to rotate within the joint.
Labral tears typically develop due to injuries and osteoarthritis. However, some people have a structural problem in which their upper leg doesn’t fit into the socket. In addition to hip pain and stiffness, you may have pain in your buttocks or groin and a clicking sound in your hip when you move.
Hip fracture
Your chances of suffering a hip fracture increase as you get older, primarily because you’re more likely to have weak, brittle bones (osteoporosis) that break easily.
Osteoporosis can make your bones so weak that your hip breaks while you’re walking or standing. However, more than 95% of hip fractures occur during a fall that breaks the upper part of your leg bone. Hip fractures are extremely painful and often need surgery to repair the bone.
Relief for hip pain
No matter what causes your hip pain, we can help you find the relief you need with interventional medicine. We specialize in nerve blocks, radiofrequency ablation, spinal cord stimulation, and other advanced treatments that target specific nerves and stop them from sending pain messages to your brain.
You can get relief from hip pain with skilled care from the team at Alliance Spine Associates. To schedule an appointment, call or book online today.