If you’ve been experiencing concerning hip or leg symptoms, you need to consider how much you need your hips. Each hip contains a joint that allows each leg to provide you with a full range of motion during everyday activities. The joint is called a “ball-and-socket” joint because it contains a rounded socket in the hip bone and a ball at the end of your femur or thigh bone. Hip joints make it possible for you to sit, stretch, squat, walk, run and kneel with ease. They also help you perform daily activities without lasting pain.
When you damage these joints or deterioration sets in with age or overuse, you face new medical decisions that often start with over-the-counter or prescription pain medications and non-aquatic and aquatic physical therapies and end with hip replacement surgery. A hip replacement orthopedic specialist can help you make informed decisions about your situation.
When Should You Make an Appointment? Seek the Help of a Trained Professional if You’re Experiencing Any of the Following Symptoms:
1. Noticeable Hip Changes
Hips don’t usually click, grind, or pop unless the hip joints have worn down or you’ve experienced weakness in nearby tissues. Allowing these symptoms to go unchecked can eventually result in impairment when attempting to walk. You might develop a limp that pulls muscles and adversely impacts other areas of your body, such as your other leg and spine. Over time, you might have difficulty getting up, sitting down, or walking at all.
2. Stiffness That Lasts
Most people just write off stiffness as a sign of aging and think that it will not have any significant impact on their lives. Contact a hip replacement specialist to evaluate your condition if you start feeling like you can’t put on your socks and shoes daily because of stiffness in one or both hips. The stiffness can worsen with use and age. Eventually, you might develop noise and other abnormalities and negative outcomes mentioned in the previous section.
3. Any Persistent Pain
When you feel pain, your body is attempting to alert you to a problem. Pain in one or both hips and/or the groin while performing activities that never caused pain before can indicate a severe hip problem, such as arthritis or a poorly healed dislocation. Everyone experiences temporary pain if they do too much with their bodies.
So, acute pain after normal routines that goes away with rest isn’t the primary concern. Instead, watch out for pain that doesn’t discontinue or happens outside of the norm. Lastly, if you can’t stand on one leg for one-to-two minutes with or without support because of pain, you need a hip evaluation.
Seek Excellent Medical Care
At Northwest Regional Health, we’re proud to offer a new orthopedics program to our neighbors in Winfield, Brillant, Guin, Jasper, Hamilton, Sulligent, Vernon, and surrounding areas with top surgeons, who specializes in hip replacement surgery. Every day, we focus on giving the members of our community the best inpatient care.