Are Your Hips Aligned Properly?

A misalignment on your hips can cause low back pain and sometimes knee pain. But what's the cause for the misalignment in your hips? Well, there are a few things to consider here. The first thing top Vacaville chiropractor Alex Tam explains is that there might be some difference when it comes to the length of your legs. There are 2 kinds of leg length issues:

• Anatomical short leg - This leg length problem cannot be changed because your body grew it that way. In maybe due to an injury to a growth plate that you have acquired when you were still a child or probably experienced a devastating injury as an adult in which it broke your femur, or maybe your legs just grew in different lengths.
• Functional short leg - This is caused by an unstable pelvis that made its way to the tip anterior or posterior.

Anatomical leg length issues may have a chance of being fixed using a heel lift or custom orthotic. A functional short leg on the other hand can be corrected with the help of constant chiropractic care.

Determining The Cause of Your Hip Pain in Vacaville CA

1. Confirm a misalignment on your hips - The first thing that you can do is to go see a chiropractor and undergo an x-ray exam of your lower back. Through an x-ray, you can find out if a functional and/or an anatomical leg length discrepancy is present. This process will help the doctor narrow down the exact cause of your problem as well as the recommended treatment for your situation.
2. Assess your pain - Having a hip misalignment can cause pain on one or more of the 3 areas:
   1. Hip joint - A misaligned hips will add more stress to the dropped side which can decrease the joint space of the hip thus causing pain.
   2. Lower back - Having a misaligned hips or pelvis is sometimes linked with hyperextension of the lower back, weakness of the abdominal muscles, and tightness in the muscles of the lower back.
   3. Knee - When the hips or pelvis is misaligned, stress is added to the knee which then causes the body weight to shift to one side. The added weight will put strain on the medial knee and can cause pain.
3. Assess your posture - You can visit your chiropractor so that they can screen your posture and locate any abnormalities in your body. This will help diagnose which part of the body is out of alignment and assess which treatment is best suited for you. Any misalignment on your head, shoulders, ribcage, hips, and ankles will be detected. It will also rule out if you've been bearing your weight forward or backward in which it can put on excess pressure on several regions of the body.
4. Find out what's causing the misalignment and the best way to correct it -
   1. Stretch - After doing a brisk warm-up, make sure that you stretch the glutes, quads, and hamstrings so that your muscles are ready for the work out. If you didn't stretch properly, it can cause overcompensation problems when you're working out which can lead to hip misalignment.
   2. Posture - Be conscious of your posture. If you feel like you're slouching, strengthen your core, and sit up straight. It may be a simple approach, but it sure does realign your body as well as your hips.
   3. Heavy bags - If you're wearing a heavy shoulder bag on one side, it will shift your body thus throwing your hips and pelvis out of place. It's best to use a double strap backpack or you can also reduce the contents of your bag to make it lighter.
   4. Footwear - If you're not wearing the right kind of shoes or don't have enough support on your feet, you are likely to experience hips misalignment especially if you already have an existing leg length issue. Make sure that you see your chiropractor so that you can get a custom fit orthotic to ensure that everything's aligned properly.
   5. Chiropractic care - If you're getting constant chiropractic care in Vacaville, you will be in the path of correcting your misalignment for the long term. When you're getting treatment, make sure to not only focus on the hip misalignment but also for full spine misalignments. Chiropractic care is painless and inexpensive so get in contact with your local chiropractor right away.

Call Absolute Integrative Physical Medicine today to schedule an appointment.