Healthy Hip Tips
Daily pain in your hip can make simple tasks like walking or climbing the stairs a pain filled experience, but with a few simple tips to maintain hip health, hip pain could be a thing of the past…
Start your day with exercise
Doing the bridge exercise in the morning gets your muscles working, activated, and engaged and will help support you the rest of the day. Lie on your back with your legs bent and your feet flat on the floor, hip-width apart. Press down through your ankles and raise your buttocks off the floor while you tighten your abdominal muscles. Hold this position for three to five seconds and then slowly lower your buttocks back to the floor. Start with one set of 10 and build up to two or three sets.
Cool Inflammation With Ice
Icing a joint that’s inflamed can lower inflammation and help with hip pain. Ice four or five times daily for about 10 to 15 minutes. Use an ice pack, wrap a towel around it, and put it where you feel the pain.
Use Heat for Arthritis
Warming up a hip joint that is troubled by arthritic pain with a hot shower or bath can soothe the joint. Don’t use heat, however, if your hip pain is caused by bursitis because it can make this type of inflammation worse.
Stretch to Relieve Bursitis
Stretching the hip muscles that sit on top of a bursae can give some relief from bursitis pain.
Strengthen Inner Thighs
This is another muscle group that helps support your hips. Strengthening your inner thighs provides a great support structure for your hips.
Strengthen Outer Thighs
So as not to be uneven and therefore add strain in other areas, it is important to counter increasing the strength of the inner thighs with increasing the strength of the outer thighs also. Think of it as building a muscular brace for your hip structure.
Work Out in Water
Swimming and aqua aerobics are great exercises for your hip joints. Exercising in water allows you to strengthen your muscles without putting as much stress and pressure on your joints.
Avoid High-Impact Activities
Running and jumping can make hip pain far worse, so they are best avoided. Walking is a much better option.
Lose Weight for Arthritis Relief
Losing even a few pounds can help offset pressure on the joint and relieve hip pain.
Listen to your Body
Exercise is good for you… But it is important to listen to your body. Some pain is normal after exercise, but if the pain lingers for hours or days afterward, that’s a sign that your joint needs to rest. Pain after exercise shouldn’t persist or become worse. Also, if you experience a sharp or shooting pain, stop the activity immediately and talk to your chiropractor.
At Walkley Chiropractic we see many and all types of hip problems and our experienced, highly trained chiropractors are very skilled at easing the symptoms and pain associated with such conditions.
We have clinics throughout the South West so call us today to book your appointment.