5 Potential Culprits Behind Your Hip Pain

When you have a painful joint, you can usually find relief when you take a load off and sit or lie down. This isn’t necessarily the case with hip pain, which can not only flare when you’re active, but also when you’re sitting or sleeping.

If you’re spending far too much time struggling with hip pain, it’s time to get answers, and relief. To get started, our team here at Revive Spine & Pain Center has pulled together five of the more common culprits behind hip pain.

Arthritis

There are more than 100 different types of arthritis, but the three that can strike hard at the hips are osteoarthritis (OA), rheumatoid arthritis, and ankylosing spondylitis. Of this list, OA is the most common and occurs when cartilage in your hip joints wears down.

Whatever type of arthritis you have, you can be left with pain, inflammation, and stiffness in your hips that can often start out slowly, but progress until you have more uncomfortable days than not.

Hip bursitis

Scattered throughout the joints in your body are small fluid-filled sacs called bursa sacs. These sacs act as spacers to prevent friction between bones and other tissues. 

Your hips feature two major bursae — the greater trochanter bursa on the pointy outside bone of your hip and the iliopsoas bursa, which is located near your groin. 

Should either of these bursa sacs become irritated and inflamed, it can lead to bursitis, which, in turn, can lead to hip pain when you’re active, when you’re sitting, and when you’re sleeping.

Hip labral tear

Your hip is a ball-and-socket joint where the top of your femur (femoral head) fits inside a socket (acetabulum) located in your pelvic bone. To keep the femoral head in place, your socket has a ring of cartilage around its rim called a labrum.

Tears in this labral tissue can occur due to several reasons:

• Overuse
• Injury
• Hip impingement
• Hip dysplasia
• Degenerative issues, such as OA

When you have a labral tear, pain and stiffness are among the first symptoms that get your attention. Other than pain, you may also feel a clicking sensation in your hip.

Hip Impingement

We referenced hip impingement above, but we’d like to expand on this condition. Also called femoroacetabular impingement, this issue occurs when the ball pinches the socket (it doesn't fit well), which can damage the labrum and lead to hip pain or the socket is too big for the ball.

Iliotibial band syndrome

Your iliotibial band is a tendon that runs from the outer part of your hip to the outer part of your knee. If you overstress this connective tissue, you can be left with pain in your hip, as well as in your knee. You might also hear or feel a clicking in your hip or knee. 

This syndrome accounts for about 12% of injuries in runners.

Getting help for your hip pain

The list above is by no means complete, but we wanted to give you an idea of the myriad ways in which hip pain can develop. The best way to get relief is to come see us for an evaluation. Once we identify the source of your hip pain, we can get you on a treatment protocol moving forward.

To get started, please schedule an appointment at one of our locations in Marlton, Hamilton Township, and East Brunswick, New Jersey.