You wake up in the morning and, instead of feeling refreshed, rested, and ready, you’re overwhelmed by aching pain in your hips. What’s causing this morning hip pain, and could it indicate an underlying medical condition? What’s the best way to relieve your symptoms?
Turn to the interventional pain management experts at Alpenglow Pain & Wellness for the answers you need. Dr. Nichelle Renk and Dr. Mary Beth Calor provide comprehensive pain management treatment for patients from in and around Anchorage, Alaska.
Dr. Renk can help you understand the reason for your joint pain, and explore your treatment options with you.
Your hip pain could be the result of simple body mechanics issues in your sleep. Or, it could signal an underlying condition in need of treatment.
Your provider at Alpenglow Pain & Wellness discusses your symptoms with you and reviews your health history and current physical condition. Diagnostic imaging exams can also give us more information about your condition.
The first question to ask is if you need to change your sleeping position or space. A new, more supportive mattress might make all the difference. If you sleep on your stomach, hip and low back pain may be related to that position. You can also support yourself with pillows when you sleep.
If your hip pain flares up throughout the day, as well as in the morning, it’s possible you could have a chronic pain condition like these listed below.
Both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis can cause you to wake with hip pain. If you have this condition, bones grinding together cause your pain and inflammation symptoms. Ankylosing spondylitis is another type of arthritis that can affect your hip joints, causing bone fusion and pain symptoms.
In this chronic condition, fluid-filled sacs located in your hip joints, called bursa, suffer from inflammation. Bursitis can flare up in the mornings if you sleep in a position that irritates a bursa. Bursitis pain also tends to flare up throughout the day.
You have tendons located around your hip bone that can become irritated or inflamed after strenuous activity. You’re at greater risk of tendonitis in your hip as you get older. Tendonitis often occurs with redness or swelling in the affected area, and may cause dysfunction with bending over.
Your sciatic nerve runs down the back of your legs from your lower spine, branching out on both sides of your hips. Compression or irritation of this nerve is known as sciatica.
Sciatica pain often feels worse in the morning, but it can also flare up all day long. Your pain may be burning or stinging, or create a sharp, stabbing sensation running down your leg.
Once you determine the cause of your hip pain problems, you can start working with your provider at Alpenglow Pain & Wellness on your treatment plan.
At Alpenglow Pain & Wellness, your provider diagnoses your treatment needs, and offers ongoing care and support throughout the treatment process.
Icing therapy is an effective noninvasive remedy for inflammation. Anti-inflammatory medications can also give you symptom relief. Targeted injection therapies deliver medications where they’re needed most. Physical therapy can improve many chronic hip pain conditions.
In some cases, conditions like bursitis may require surgical treatment. Ultimately, procedures like surgical total hip replacement can give you many years of pain-free mobility after hip joint deterioration.
For the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment support you need to recover from persistent hip pain, contact Dr. Renk and the team at Alpenglow Pain & Wellness. Schedule your initial consultation appointment online or over the phone today.
