Do This Now If You Want to Avoid Hip Pain Later

Hip pain is not an inevitable part of aging. Yes, degenerative changes occur as you get older, but there are many steps you can take early in life to prevent hip problems or at least slow their progression.

As pain management specialists, our Alliance Spine and Pain Centers team helps adults of all ages struggling with hip pain. In talking with them, we’ve learned that few were taught how to prevent painful hip problems. 

We hope to help by outlining the following steps you can take now to avoid hip pain later.

Minimize future fallout from hip injuries

Hip injuries at an early age increase your risk for painful hip problems later in life. In young and middle adulthood, the goals are to prevent injuries and get prompt treatment after hip pain begins.

Strength training, warming up, and stretching before sports; avoiding running on hard surfaces; and wearing supportive shoes may prevent hip injuries.

After an injury, optimal healing minimizes the long-term impact. The best way to ensure healing is to seek appropriate treatment and follow your rehabilitation plan, even if that means delaying certain activities.

Maintain a healthy weight

Carrying too much weight puts excessive stress on your hip (and knee) joints, leading to faster cartilage degeneration and osteoarthritis.

Maintaining a healthy weight throughout adulthood lowers the risk for hip degeneration. It also allows you to avoid the increasing challenges of losing weight as you get older.

As your body ages, you’re more likely to gain weight and have a hard time losing it because your metabolism slows, hormones change, and your lean muscle mass decreases. 

Other common age-related problems like insomnia, stress, and hormonal imbalances also affect your weight-loss success.

If you’re struggling to lose weight, consider joining a physician-supervised weight-loss program. They identify roadblocks that are sabotaging your weight loss and develop a plan that works for you.

Improve your diet

Even if you follow a balanced diet, you could fall short of certain nutrients that affect the health of your joints. The earlier in life you boost your diet to include these nutrients, the lower your risk of developing two conditions that frequently cause hip pain: osteoarthritis and osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis

Your body supports healthy bones by continuously eliminating and replacing old or damaged bone with strong, new bone. As you get older, you lose bone faster than it’s replaced and osteoporosis develops.

You can prevent osteoporosis later in life by consuming enough calcium and vitamin D in young adulthood and throughout your adult years.

Arthritis

An anti-inflammatory diet reduces hip pain and slows the degeneration caused by arthritis. The basics of an anti-inflammatory diet include avoiding sugar and processed foods, while consuming mostly whole foods such as lean protein, whole grains, beans, healthy fats, low-fat dairy, fruits, and vegetables. 

For more detailed guidelines, check out the Mediterranean Diet. This diet fights joint inflammation, supports weight loss, and prevents chronic diseases.

Keep exercising

Strong muscles support the hip joint, preventing injuries and age-related joint degeneration. If you keep your hip and core muscles strong throughout the first part of your life, you have a better chance of avoiding hip pain down the road.

Weight-bearing exercises like walking, jogging, dancing, jumping rope, and aerobics also help prevent osteoporosis by triggering new bone growth.

If you already have hip pain, choose low-impact activities like swimming and water aerobics and consult your physical therapist for a safe exercise routine. Our team can also help you stay active by recommending therapy that reduces your pain.

Don’t ignore hip pain

When twinges of hip pain appear, don’t shrug them off as an expected part of aging. If your pain persists or worsens, it’s time to see your doctor. Learning about the cause and how to treat the problem will eliminate the pain or at least slow or stop progressive conditions like arthritis and osteoporosis.

Get effective pain management

If you have hip pain despite your best efforts, our skilled pain management team can help. We offer many safe and effective treatments that ease hip pain by targeting the underlying problem.

Call Alliance Spine and Pain Centers or request an appointment online to get customized treatment for your hip pain.