Hip Arthritis VS Hip Muscle Strain – How To Tell The Difference

Are you dealing with hip pain, and you’re wondering if you have hip arthritis, or if you just strain some hip muscles? In this video today, I’m going to go over some tests that you can do on your own at home, so that you can tell the difference between a hip strain and hip arthritis.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. This channel is focused on helping people stay healthy, active, and mobile, while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections and medications, be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so that you don’t miss any valuable tips that we put out every week.

So let’s get into it. Here are two tests that you can do on your own to tell if you’ve got a hip muscle strain. Now in standing, shoe got to do here. So stand up, you’re going to be thinking about your hips and focus on the one that is bothering you. I’m going to pretend that it’s my right side right here. So if in standing, you twist all the way, keep your feet planted, you’re going to twist as far as you can twist to your back, twist your hips, twist your knees, twist everything.

See if you feel any trouble in there and go the other way, twist all the way the other direction. If you feel stretching, or pain or discomfort that is present on one side, but not the other side that isn’t bothersome, it might be in the front of the hip, it could be on the side of the hip could be in the groin area. If you feel any discomfort that’s different on the hip that is hurting you versus the one that’s not, that’s a sign that you might have a hip strain.

The other test I want you to do to test for hip muscle strains is sit down and move your leg all the way out. And then go all the way across if you’re going to cross your legs. And if you feel some stretching and muscles out here in the front or on the inside, then you might have a muscle strain as well.

Now, when you go all the way out, you might need to stretch out your knee that will tension the muscles just a bit more to get the full effect. But generally, where you’ll feel the problem if you got a hip strain is not reading the front of the hip more so superficial, it’s more closer to the skin around the groin area and around the outside of the hip occasionally on the front of the hip, but it’s not as frequent in the front of the hip. The front of the hip is more hip arthritis problem.

So the two tests that I want you to do for hip arthritis. One, you might have to take some time to do this. Or you might already know the answer. If you have pain in that hip, with the first few steps when you wake up in the morning, or if you’ve been sitting for a while like typically more than an hour sometimes doesn’t take that long, sometimes 20 to 30 minutes, if you’ve been sitting for a while and then you go to stand up and walk and you feel like your hip is a little stiff.

And it takes a while for it to warm up and free up and then act normal again, that’s a sign that you’ve got either beginning arthritis, or you’ve cut full-fledged arthritis, especially if it hangs out like that for a while and it’s consistent.

The other sign that you can look for to determine if you’ve got hip arthritis in the beginning signs of hip arthritis is go back to sitting. And if you turn your foot all the way inwards, that you’re going to cross your foot over your leg, and it just doesn’t go as far it causes some pain right here in the front of the hip. That’s bad.

Also, if you go out all the way and this is this tends to be the worst one if you go out all the way, and it kind of bites you on the inside of the hip and tread on the other side of it feels different on the other side, then you definitely are starting to develop a hip arthritis problem where you’ve already got hip arthritis. And the other telltale sign, like I was saying earlier is just paying the front of the hip if that’s a consistent spot, you tend to get pain right here on the front of the hip area about where the hip joint would be the ball and socket joint the hip.

That’s a common referral pattern or the place where the pain shows up. When you’ve got a hip joint a hip arthritis problem, I’m going to talk to you next about how to begin to address the two problems how to go about a treatment plan so that you can resolve the two.

Now if you’ve got a hip muscle strain, this is the better issue to deal with because it’s kind of the beat what will lead into hip arthritis. Hip muscle strain usually means that there’s a muscle imbalance. Those groin muscles or the outside hip muscles will become overactive because they’re being used too much as a result of other muscles being weaker, usually the glute muscles, oftentimes also the abdominal muscles, the abs.

If those glute muscles and ab muscles aren’t as strong as they should be, the hip flexors will be used more often and they are not supposed to be stability muscles for your hip. They’re supposed to be mover muscles for your hip, your glutes and your abs serve more as a stability muscles for your hips.

So if those glutes and abs aren’t doing their job, then those hip flexors kick in more frequently more often. And it’s just a matter of time before those hip flexors get strained or pulled, oftentimes they get pulled or strained whenever you do something a little more aggressive.

Like if you haven’t exercised in a while when you go to start exercising, or if you go to pick up something really heavy that you don’t usually pick up, say you’re moving furniture at home, or you start weightlifting or pick up a kid that you don’t pick up something of significant weight relative to what you’re used to doing.

That can set off that hip flexor strain can also make you pull your groin running is the more common associated injury with a pull groin, or also walking if you haven’t been walking for a while and you begin to walk for exercise. If you push yourself too hard, it is possible to start to strain or pull a groin muscle.

Now arthritis typically develops when there’s been a long-standing muscle imbalance. Now the interesting thing though, is people that have arthritis have the same muscle imbalance, it sets up a hip muscle strain, but oftentimes they don’t have a hip strain. I hear consistently from patients that they’ll say, all of a sudden, I got hip arthritis.

So when I woke up one morning, sort of getting stiff and I had been getting stiff for muscles never really bothered me, I could usually walk and just take me some time to warm up in the morning. Finally went to the doctor’s do something about it and they x rayed my hip and I have arthritis in my hip.

Having never pulled a groin muscle or a hip flexor muscle, they never really went through a hip muscle strain, they just began to have hip arthritis issues develop over time. They both have the same root problem, which is that muscle imbalance typically weak glutes and weak abs, but they present differently depending on the individual, some will get the hip strain, some will develop arthritis over the years.

If you’re looking to fix your hip problem, whether it’s hip arthritis or hip muscle strain, go check out our video covering the top five glute exercises, it’s linked down in the description below. And drop a comment on here. Let us know if you thought that you have more of a polled hip muscle.

Or if you’re developing more hip arthritis, if you’ve been dealing with a hip problem, whether it’s been a hip strain, or hip arthritis, and you just want to make sure that this gets taken care of so it doesn’t become something worse.

Like where you end up beating a hip replacement or some other hip procedure done, then I encourage you to get in touch with us, you can apply for a discovery visit. And with that is the 20 minute appointment with a specialist physical therapist where we take a look at your hip problem.

We hear your story about your hip issue, we might do it in person or over a video call. And if it’s over video, we’ll look at you move we’ll ask you all the questions that we normally ask in person and in person will check you by hand and of course, get your full story for your hip problem up until now.

And by the end of the appointment, we’ll want to give you a diagnosis for your hip problem. If we can’t help you, we’ll make sure to point you in the right direction. We don’t want to waste your time.

But if we can help you and you give us permission, we’ll look at developing a treatment plan for you so that if you choose to become our patient, we can kick that off and begin to resolve your hip problem for the long term so that you can avoid an unnecessary surgery and having to get injections and definitely avoid having to take pain medications for this hip issue.

I hope that we can be a part of your recovery story real soon. Have a wonderful day. Bye