Hip Pain & Sciatica

Your hips are a mastery of engineering. Not only do you use them to walk and stabilize you when you sit, but they are attachments for the dozens of muscles that help do a million different movements. However, like any machine that works best with precision, if the hips do not fit together just right, all kinds of problems can arise.

Chiropractors can get your body back in working order. Do you have pain or weakness in your leg, knee, hip, buttock or lower back? Is one of your legs shorter than the other? Do you hear a clicking when you walk? Do your feet angle in or out? If you answered yes, then it is time to see a chiropractor to check your hips.

Subluxations, or the Vertebral Subluxation Complex (VSC) is a jamming, locking or distortion of your spine. It irritates, pulls or compresses your nerves, weakens your discs, stretches ligaments, tendons and muscles, unbalances your posture and can upset your state of health. Often, VSC is painless initially; you may have it and not know.

Your Pelvis and Hips

At birth we have many more bones than in adulthood. During puberty our hip bones (the ileum, ischium and pubis) fuse together. Making up the back of your hip bone is the sacrum and coccyx, and in the front is your pubic bone. Together they are your pelvis. Females have a wider pelvis than males, and it’s more curved – there is room for a baby to be delivered.

Hip Joints

Two bones meet at a junction called a joint. The joints of your hips allow you to move in many directions. Your leg bone meets the hips at a ball-and-socket joint. The sacroiliac (SI) joint is where the sacrum and ilium meet. At the pubic symphysis the two pubic bones meet. This join separates a little during childbirth to allow for delivery.

Pain in lower back, buttocks, and thighs

An unbalanced hip in adults has been implicated in causing lower back pain.1-2 One report says, "Dysfunction in the hip joint may be a primary factor in the development of mechanical lower back pain."3 "On confronting a patient in severe pain of sciatic (leg pain) distribution the first thought should be "sacroiliac" not "disc"…. (with) manipulation… surgical treatment is forgotten" states another study.4

Nerves in your spinal cord and hips travel to your kidneys, bladder, prostate, vagina, uterus and lower intestine. Insuring that these organs are free of stress, compression and irritation is very important.5 The intimate relationship between spinal health and hip, SI and leg problems has been noted by chiropractors for over a century.6-7 If your hips are uneven, then your legs are uneven, one appearing longer than the other. As you walk, more pressure is placed on the longer leg including your knee, hips, feet and ankles, and you may feel pain or pressure. As it is most noticeable when you lie down, chiropractors may use it as a test.

Pregnancy

Hormones in pregnant women, which relax their joints in order to make delivery easier, create changes in the body. If their spines are unbalanced, this change may reveal the instability of the joint. This can be painful for some women. Chiropractic care is helpful during and after pregnancy. A properly aligned SI joint will allow for a more comfortable, safer delivery and an easier post-partum recovery.8-9

Hip Problems in Children

Children are very active and physical; their lives are full of accidents, cuts, scrapes, and falls. A child should have their spine and sacroiliac joint checked by a chiropractor to ensure it is free of subluxations. Chiropractors and body workers have observed children who have had a stressful birth could have damage in their spine that could cause problems in their adult life if the subluxations are not corrected.10-12

About Sciatica & Leg Pain

The longest and largest nerve in the body is your sciatic nerve. It begins at your spinal cord, exiting your sacrum as five nerves which join together to run from your pelvis down your leg to your toes. When this nerve becomes inflamed, it is a condition called sciatica.

This can be an incredibly painful condition. You may experience pain following the nerve down the back of your leg to the foot or you may feel burning, pins and needles, prickling, tingling, crawling sensations, tenderness or numbness at any point along the way. In some people, the pain will radiate upwards into the back, around to the front of the leg (it usually is felt in the back of the leg), side of the leg or hips and some people have bilateral sciatica (sciatica on both legs).

Pain like a knife

The pain varies from person to person, day to day; throbbing and constant, a dull ache, or sharp like a knife. Changing body positions may help the pain, or it may not. If severe, sciatica can cause loss of muscle in the calf or loss of reflexes. Sleep is often lost in sciatic sufferers. Daily activities like walking, standing, turning, and bending can become painful, difficult and impossible.

What is the cause of sciatica?

Many things will cause sciatica. One main cause is an unhealthy spine with a ruptured or protruded disc which irritates the nerve. Spinal misalignment due to an accident, child birth, or injury has been reported to cause sciatica.13 Other conditions known to irritate the sciatic nerve are diabetes, arthritis, tumors, constipation, and vitamin deficiencies.

How does the medical field approach sciatica?

The medical approach to this nerve condition is to treat symptoms. Physical therapy, painkillers, muscle relaxants, and orthopedic devices have little to no success. Patients are often frustrated when treated with painkillers because they are hardly effective and the risks may include dependency. Relief has been obtained by injecting painkillers into the nerve roots or in extreme cases orthopedic surgery. Bed rest is often prescribed, little objective data is available to show if it works. Increasingly, there is evidence that rest is ineffective for both low back pain and sciatica.14

How do chiropractors treat sciatica and leg pain?

Sciatica suffers have had dramatic results and relief from chiropractic care.15-16 Many have found not only more relief than injections and traction, but have avoided surgery.17-19

One controlled study offered results from four different approaches to patients with lower back and sciatic pain, including traction, two different types of injections and spinal care. The greatest degrees of recovery were experienced by the spinal care group and interestingly, in the traction group, a large number eventually required surgery.20 Another studied lower back and leg pain suffering patients, who where between the ages of 20 and 65, by dividing them into three groups and giving medical care, chiropractic care and steroid injections. The study showed the medical patients and those receiving steroid injections to have no advantage over the safer, drug free approach of chiropractic care.21

Chiropractic care is most effective when used as a first treatment. Even so, many people decide to seek medical care first. Fortunately, these patients may also achieve excellent results from chiropractic care. A study followed 3,136 people with lower back and sciatic pain who had no results with medical care which included physical therapy and drug treatments. The patients were given chiropractic care, and followed up with two years later showing that 50.4% of patients had excellent results and no painful relapses, 34.4% had relapses that responded favorably to further chiropractic care and 15.2% had no significant improvement.22

Those who suffer from sciatica should see a doctor of chiropractic to make sure their spine is free of subluxations which cause misalignment, disc and nerve pressure, and stress on the entire body.

Other Causes of Leg Pain

Damage can occur to the nerves that go down the legs. This condition is called neurogenic claudication. The pain prevents walking for long periods of time, often the sufferer has to stop and rest. Symptoms are pain and nerve sensations (called parasthesias) that start after walking and will disappear after resting. The pain may include cramping, numbness, aching, and fatigue. Although it is usually present in the calf, you may also feel it in the foot, thigh, buttocks or hips. Even though a common way of dealing with the condition is surgery, spinal care should always be tried before resorting to surgical techniques.23

Conclusion

A family’s healthcare routine should include chiropractic spinal checkups. Children should be checked up since SI and lower back problems may start in childhood. Women who are pregnant should have an exam since the hips and stress of pregnancy can affect the hips and spine. Anyone with lower back or hip pain should get a check up and make sure their spine is in balance. Why wait for the pain to arise, get in for regular exams.

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