Top 4 Reasons For Chronic Pain On The Front Of The Hip

In this video I’m going to tell you the top four reasons for chronic pain on the front of the hip. My name is Dr. David Middaugh Finn, I’m a specialist physical therapist that’ll pass so manual physical therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections, and pain medications. Please consider subscribing to this channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos that we post every single week.

Before I go into each reason for pain in the front of the hip, I need to let you know that in the description below this video, I’ve got links to playlists that go into more specific details about each of the reasons for pain on the front of the hip. So after you’ve watched this video, go check that playlist out for your condition that you think you have. So let’s get into it. Reason number one, for chronic pain on the front of the hip is got to be hip arthritis, specifically, hip osteoarthritis, there’s different kinds of arthritis.

I’m talking hip osteoarthritis, but I’m just going to say arthritis for short moving forward. So hip arthritis means the ball and socket joint in here is no longer moving smoothly inside the joint, there’s usually some sort of degenerative changes. Sometimes it’s called DJD, or degenerative joint disease. Inside the ball and socket joint, this might be the surface of the socket, or the surface of the ball that has become slightly irregular, sometimes the cartilage is worn down, your doctor might tell you that you have a bone-on-bone situation in your hip joint as well.

That’s all kind of the same thing. They’re talking about hip osteoarthritis most of the time, common signs of hip arthritis are going to be stiffness in the hip, especially when you first wake up in the morning and get up to move. Or if you’ve been sitting for a long time, then you go get up to move those first steps can be quite uncomfortable, you might feel very stiff. You of course, pain in the hip is another sign.

And in severe cases of hip osteoarthritis, you might have losses of motion to where you can’t move your hips the same way the one that’s bothering you is restricted or limited in how you can move like you can’t bring your knee all the way up, or move your leg all the way out or rotation like where you twist your foot outwards and inwards might be affected as well. In very advanced cases of hip arthritis, your doctor might recommend you see a surgeon and possibly recommend a hip replacement surgery.

But the good news is that if your hip is not that bad, if you haven’t had massive losses in motion, you might be able to get your pain to come down, improve the mobility so you’re not so stiff. And you might be able to do this naturally. We talk all about that here on our channel. Reason number two is a hip strain or a hip sprain. A hip strain is when you injure a tendon of a muscle in the area of the hip.

Of course, the front of the hip, you have a bunch of muscles that the most commonly injured ones are going to be your psoas muscle, your iliacus muscle as well as your rectus femoris muscle which is actually a quad muscle that runs in the front of your thigh. But it does have an attachment right here on the front of the hip, and that one can often be injured. A sprain is an injury to the actual hip joints.

The ligaments specifically, both of these conditions, a hip strain or hip sprain, typically are due to overdoing it somehow, if you’ve had a recent uptick in your activity, like you’ve started to exercise more often or you you’re walking a lot more for whatever reason you’re on your feet having to move a lot more your intensity of your exercise has increased too, that could be setting you up for a hip strain or a hip sprain.

And in some cases, accidents can set this off as well like a car accident, a bike accident, or some sort of physical activity accident a sports injury is really common, a sporting accident like in wrestling, martial arts or some fall that you might have sustained while doing sports that could injure the joint and cause a sprain to the ligaments of the hip joints.

Typically, hip strains and sprains will get better if you just rest them for a bit. But you’re at risk for not moving the joint properly or beginning a muscle imbalance meaning you’re overcompensating with some muscles because that that strain or that sprain, so you just have to be careful that you’re moving forward properly, that you’re doing exercises properly afterwards, and that you’re activating the right muscles in your hip at the right times afterwards.

Again, we go into detail about that in our playlist. Go check that out in the description once this video is over. The reason number three is going to be hip tendinitis, and this is usually what happens next after a hip strain or a hip sprain, if it’s not treated properly. Hip tendinitis is irritation or inflammation to tendons in the area.

Now, if you’ve developed hip tendinitis, typically, you’ve had a sprain or a strain that’s been going on for weeks or months, and now the tendons are becoming inflamed, and they can hurt to move. This usually is aggravated whenever you move a certain way whenever you strain like you do something more aggressively, or if you’re on your feet for long periods of time, this can affect you. And like Reason number two with hips, strains and sprains.

Hip tendinitis tends to affect People that are a little bit younger versus arthritis tends to affect people that are older. And to give you specific ages, hip arthritis is going to be people that are typically 50s 60s and up and hip tendinitis and sprains and strains is typically going to be people in their 20s 30s and 40s.

If this is treated properly, you can get over it 100%, you just have to make sure that you take care of any muscle imbalances that your joint gains back all the motion that you’ve lost if you’ve lost any, and that your movement resumes is normal that you’re running normally again, walking normally again, using stairs normally again, that you’re not compensating somehow because then you’re going to feed into some muscle imbalance.

It’s going to set you up for some worse problem later on. And reason number four for chronic pain in the front of the hip is a hip labrum injury or a hip labrum tear with the hip labrum is it’s a chunk of cartilage a ring of cartilage that goes around the socket on the ball and socket joints and it helps to deepen the socket to create stability in the joints. It also gives the joint a little bit more flexibility so that you can have all the range of motion that your hip has commonly hip labrum tears happen kind of at the front edge of the of the hip socket right here.

So it sends pain into the front of the hip and groin area. People typically will say they hurt right here, right where their leg meets their body or their leg folds on their body. It’s the same for all these conditions for hip arthritis, hip labrum tears. For the tendinitis and sprains and strains, those that’s a general area that you’re going to get pain, but they feel a little bit different. A hip arthritis problem and a labrum problem are similar, in that the pain is usually quite deep in the hip.

The biggest difference between a hip arthritis problem and a labrum tear is that you don’t usually have losses of motion. And if you do, because it is possible to get a loss of motion with the hip labrum tear. People have the experience where they can kind of loosen up their leg, shake it out or move it a certain way or maybe do some exercises that gain the motion back and they don’t have a chronic loss of motion.

It does hurt still, typically, but they can usually gain the motion back that’s a classic sign of having a hip labrum tear. It’s diagnosed using an MRI, and there are surgeries done for hip labor arms, they’ll do a hip labrum repair, or they might even just cut out a chunk of the labrum as well. Usually what sets up a hip labrum tear is a muscle imbalance. Weak glutes are a big big culprit of a hip labrum tear.

So addressing your glute strength is going to be critical and making sure that you can fix your hip labrum problem without having to rely on surgery. If people that have had a confirmed diagnosis of a hip labrum tear, if that’s you, it doesn’t mean that you’re destined to have a hip labrum tear surgery. You could heal the labrum and go on in life and feel fine. You could be very active again as long as the hip labrum tear is not too severe, and you can manage the symptoms with basic exercise.

Part of the recovery is also learning how to walk properly, how to use stairs properly, and learning relearning how to exercise correctly so that your glutes are driving all the motions and you’re taking pressure off that spot where you injured your labrum. I hope this video was helpful for you if you’re dealing with pain on the front of the hip. If you know anybody else is dealing with pain in the front of the hip, please share this video with them.

I’m sure you’ll really appreciate that you help them out. And don’t forget to go down into the description and find the playlist that best fits your situation so that you can take the next steps on healing your problem on the front of your hip. Thanks so much for watching friends and we’ll catch in the next video. Bye