What Are the Alternatives to a Hip Replacement?

Hip pain can make an impact on many aspects of your day to day life. Walking, going up and down stairs, sitting, carrying, standing, lifting, and bending are all movements that can be complicated if you’re experiencing pain in your hips. 

While there are some things you can do to relieve pain (take an over-the-counter pain reliever, alternate hot and cold packs, rest), a band-aid approach isn’t going to solve the issue. Get curious about getting to the roots and address the cause.

What can cause hip pain?

Some causes of hip pain are various forms of arthritis, injuries to the muscles, tendons, and ligaments of the hip, pinched nerves, some forms of cancer, or bone disease. Your healthcare practitioner can help determine if any of these are causing your hip pain. If you are experiencing intense pain, sudden swelling, a deformed joint, any signs of infection such as fever, redness, or chills, or if you cannot move or bear weight on your leg or hip, you should seek medical advice at once. 

If you haven’t experienced an event that obviously caused the pain to begin, the first step is to notice the symptom. Sometimes pain creeps up on you, and becomes part of your daily routine. In the rush to do all the things that need to be done, you may not notice or just brush off increasing pain until it prevents you from doing what you planned to do. 

Then, get curious about the cause: does the pain come from the joints, the muscles, or both? Is the pain located in the hip, or is it actually lower back pain? Is the pain on the inside of your hip or groin, which indicates it may be an issue with the joint, or more on the outside of your hip in your butt or thigh muscles, which indicates it may be an issue with muscles, ligaments, or tendons? Was the onset of pain gradual, or can you trace it to a specific incident? 

How An Integrative Healthcare Team can Help with Hip Pain

It’s important to get a second opinion when it comes to joint pain. This is where an integrative healthcare team can be very helpful. Having a variety of professionals tackle your issue means having several perspectives and treatment options available. A team can offer several suggestions based on what your goals are. 

Besides your MD, here are several other professionals who can offer insight and treatment for conservative and non-invasive natural pain relief for hip pain.

Chiropractor: a chiropractor can help you root out the cause and source of your hip pain. They can also make sure that the pelvis is properly aligned with the spine and is balanced. The pelvic cradle can tip forwards or backwards as a result of sitting for long periods of time. It can also be skewed from carrying things (think lugging toddlers on the same hip for years at a time), which puts increased pressure on the joint and can cause pain in the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Besides aligning and balancing the pelvis and getting to the cause of your pain, a chiropractor may also have access to a variety of regenerative medicine therapies that may help stimulate healing in different ways or offer other forms of pain relief. 

Physical therapist: a physical therapist can help you focus on how to restore form and function in the hip joint. They may teach you exercises to lengthen and strengthen the muscles in the hip. There are muscles involved in both flexing and extending the hip, and these hard-working muscles need to be strong and work together to prevent fatigue. They can also become tight from both overwork and disuse, so a physical therapist can help you pinpoint the movements that may help in your specific case. Stretches that target those muscles such as the figure four stretch or the hamstring stretch may help loosen tight muscles. Physical therapists can offer suggestions on posture and body mechanics that can help reduce the strain on the hips. 

A physical therapist can also take a look at your feet and may recommend orthotics. If you have a tendency to roll your foot in or out while walking, over time this uneven distribution of weight and force can cause problems in your knees or hips. Orthotics to support your feet in an optimal position as you move can help maintain proper alignment in your hips and reduce wear and tear on that joint, as well as prevent pain in the muscles, tendons, and ligaments that results when they are required to compensate for pronation or supination. 

Massage Therapist: a massage therapist can offer pain relief, and also help discover the cause of hip pain.  Often hip pain can be referred pain, which means that an issue occurring in one part of the body causes pain in a different place. If there are issues in the lumbar spine, with either nerves or muscles, it can cause referred pain in the hip. Massage therapists are trained to identify trigger points in the muscles of the hips, thighs, and buttocks, and can help identify the source of the pain, which can then be translated into an appropriate pain relief treatment plan.

The hip joint is the second largest weight bearing joint in the body (after the knee). The snug fit of the ball-and-socket joint means that it is both extremely strong and also extremely flexible, and is responsible for a large range of movements. It is a source of both mobility and stability, and any pain in the hip restricts movement and impedes stability. If your hips are slowing you down, get curious and take the time to explore the issue. Take advantage of the knowledge and skills of the integrative healthcare team at Natural State Health Center in Little Rock, and let us help you get moving again.