Common injuries start as hip pain

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Some common causes:

1) A car accident: So you’re sitting there; your foot is at or near the brake or the accelerator and the car suddenly goes forward( because of an accident). This causes the thigh to push suddenly back up which aggravates increases the forward motion of the hip that we just talked about.

2) Stepping off a high curb

3) Missing a stair or two, especially downstairs.

4) Falling down on the ground.

5) Falling down on the ice.        

We are not considering actual hip joint arthritis or other structural damage to it.

One’s pain starts with the 5 nerve roots that emerge from the side of the sacrum and then occurs below and often up in the back: above the hips.

The excess forward rotation of this hip produces a number of side effects that can cause more pain. As the rotating thigh, leg and foot rotate outward, these stressed structures may start to have pain.

I always start my back and/or hip exam by watching the patient walk.

Most often, I can see right off that the foot rotates in a little semi-circle moving outward and forward.

As the patient walks up and down the hall, we usually see on the exam that the foot on the side of the pain moves through a little bit of a semi-circle.

 These nerves go out to the lower body, from the waist level down to the toes:  front; sides; and back, to provide sensation pathways for your lower body plus connections to your muscles.

Eventually, the involved areas can include all areas from the waist and down to the toes on all sides.

As you can imagine, now, this tiny excess anterior rotation of the hip could generate pain in almost any place from the waist down part or all of the thigh, leg, and foot. The consequence is that your pain can be in any or all of these lower body places.

The physician’s job is to discover the pattern of pain and where exactly the pain is coming from.