Lower back and leg pain is very common. Most practitioners focus on the lumbar spine and the sacro-Iliac joints. Very few practitioners focus on the hip joint.
When the hip joint stops moving properly, the joints above have to move too much, creating further irritation to the lumbar discs and the Sacro-Iliac. The knee or ankles or foot can start complaining, also.
So many aging patients are told, you have degenerative joints. I say, yes, you have wrinkles and gray hair too. Mild to moderate hip joint degeneration is treatable without surgery. Worn out joints may or may not be the cause of your pain. Images, even fancy ones like MRI, can lead the doctor in the wrong direction.
The ancient medical art of listening to a history and performing a skilled physical examination has been lost in modern medicine.
How can you suspect if your hip is part of the problem? You may have pain or tightness in the groin. You may feel like your leg does not swing as easily. You may have trouble going up stairs or walking up hills.
When people feel like their hip isn’t working right, they often try yoga-related “open the hip” strategies. This is usually the wrong strategy.
When the hip is “off,” the joint is not seated properly into its socket, and the hip tends to be rotated outwards. Opening the hip type stretches can make this worse.
What can we do for this? Teach you the right exercises, mobilize your hip in the right direction, and show you what NOT to do. Simple strategies can create miraculous results.
Sometimes the arthritis is too advanced, and we need to refer for surgery. This becomes clear to both me and my patient, after a few visits.
More information from Marc Heller on this condition:
https://dynamicchiropractic.com/article/57347-functional-hip-impingement-part-1
