Featured Focus: Anterior (Front of) Hip Pain

As a Doctor of Chiropractic, Dr. Braun specializes in sorting out where pain is coming from. Quite often, health service professionals will get tunnel vision and miss what is actually causing dysfunction and pain and patients end up in a loop of care that is frustratingly slow and unproductive.

Especially with our culture’s shift into crummy, work-from-home setups, It is common to experience pain in the front of our hip joint. This pain can be accompanied by other conditions like lower back pain and/or pain and stiffness with exercise. Often, you will have experienced pain standing from sitting and swinging your leg into the seat of a car.

As Dr. Braun sees it, the body is organized into a generalized 2 categories (Structure and Function). Structure entails the bones, joints, and the ligaments that tie it all together. This provides the form for your posture and anchoring points for function. The Function of your body entails the rest. Muscles, nerves, circulation, and organ systems are what give us life and keep us moving.

Anterior hip pain can be a result of problems in both structure and function. Structurally, over time, many people experience the pain and loss of motion from hip arthritis. More commonly, painful movements are a result of an imbalance in the musculature of the area. The Iliopsoas, Pectineus, and attachments for the groin musculature are all common culprits. Thankfully, these conditions can be prevented through hobbies that support flexibility and balance of functional systems.

The more you sit and the less you exercise, the more anterior hip pain you will experience. As we sit, the muscles at the front of our hip (as well as the ligaments and joint capsules of our structure) tighten. On top of that, the opposing muscle groups (including the Gluteals and Hamstrings) become weak and further create dysfunction and pain.

Thankfully, there’s hope. Dr. Braun has found immense value in patients with this condition through a combination of joint mobility in the hips and lower back, supported by specific myofascial release of the anterior muscles, and strengthening of the guteals and other musculature of the back of the body. To support treatment, a diet that combats systemic inflammation through healthy food and supplementation like high quality antioxidents and fish oils has been shown to speed things along.

#health #HipPain #SportsChiropractorPasadena