3D illustration, hip painful skeleton x-ray, medical concept.
Having a bad hip can be even more difficult than other forms of chronic pain. To make matters worse, many very different conditions can lead to hip pain. The patients who struggle with hip pain might eventually start to experience other forms of chronic pain. Orthopedic medical experts like James Lee, Jr., MD can help prevent these problems from escalating. They can also do something about the hip pain itself.
Developing Hip Pain
Your hip pain might have developed very quickly. You might have these problems after fracturing your hip in an accident. It’s possible for people to genuinely develop chronic hip problems overnight, forcing them to cope with such a dramatic change afterward.
Other people will get hip problems because of a chronic condition like osteoporosis. While most patients will not get osteoporosis until they’re older, it is still possible to develop this condition at an earlier age. Ballet dancers, for instance, will sometimes get osteoporosis before middle age. While other athletes might not be as prone to this specific disorder, older sports injuries can still cause hip problems and hip pain later in life.
Hip Pain and Cancer
If you’ve suddenly started to experience hip pain, it could be a sign of bone cancer or another form of cancer. There are different forms of cancer that can sometimes cause referred pain in other parts of the body. For instance, lung cancer patients will sometimes get shoulder pain. They might think that they’ll need shoulder replacement surgery, but the source of the pain will still be the cancer itself.
Cancer is more treatable now than it ever was previously, so the patients who think that they might have cancer are certainly encouraged to get it diagnosed as quickly as possible. They shouldn’t think that it won’t matter one way or another, because they’ll have no way of knowing whether or not their particular cancer case is operable. Cancer survivors who have also had to cope with hip pain, in the meantime, may have managed to solve both of those problems after getting the cancer treated and removed.
Lifestyle Factors and Hip Pain
There are forms of hip pain that have much milder causes. You might just need to modify your lifestyle. For instance, if you’re a person who is used to sleeping on either side, changing your sleeping style can make more of a difference than you might think. Some people have gotten results from resting with specialized supports and leg pillows. However, it’s still healthier in general for people to sleep on their backs and not on their sides.
If you’re an athlete, whether professional or not, a sports doctor might be able to help you manage hip problems. Some of these issues can eventually become permanent. If your hip pain subsides after you rest, you should probably still have the chance to stop yourself from experience permanent hip problems.
Athletes who have good diets and who are sure to rest and avoid overexerting themselves are more likely to have healthy hips later in life. Avoiding injury is important as an athlete, and it can have a strong impact on your future hip health. Calcium and vitamin D supplements can be just as useful.
When your hip problems have progressed to a certain point, you may need to make an appointment with an orthopedic specialist. Many of these issues cannot be solved independently. The right treatment methods might still help solve your hip pain.