This is a discussion on the non-surgical treatment of hip arthritis.
First thing I recommend for people is to modify their activities. So this involves doing more of the light, low impact activities such as swimming, biking, walking or hiking.
You’re trying to avoid the higher impact activities such as running on the pavement or cutting-type sports, soccer, or hiking, you know, going up and down, steep inclines or declines. These types of heavy pounding, heavy impact activities generally irritate the hip more while they give you, can give you a workout, they often irritate the hip and therefore cause more harm than good.
In terms of medications, first thing we always recommend is Tylenol. This is purely a pain medication. And if this isn’t effect of its own, adding an anti-inflammatory is a good combination so you can take Tylenol with anti-inflammatory such as ibuprofen or Naproxen or Aleve. Together this combination is more effective than any of the medications on their own.
Physical therapy is often a thing we recommend. This can be done with a physical therapist or done on your own. It involves stretching, strengthening the hip, in the midrange of motion, so gentle stretching and strengthening, like I’ve said, mid-range, best type of activities are things again, like I said, swimming, walking, bike, stationery bike, trying elliptical or step machine, these low impact, Nautilus type machines on a very low setting, they move the hip through mid-range of motion and avoid the high impact that can irritate the joint.
Massage can often be very helpful. This reduces inflammation and can reduce muscle spasm and either done on your own or with a professional masseuse, it can be quite effective.
Diet is another thing. People talk about dietary triggers and I know there’s work being done on certain inflammatory diets that are, you know, can cause problems for more people. It’s difficult for me to discuss it, and difficult to make good comments. It’s not something I have much expertise in, but I know I have heard from patients and read that the diet plays a fairly large role in pain from arthritis.
And related to this is losing weight. The big reason why patients have difficult moving and dealing with arthritis is because they’re overweight. So losing weight and getting closer to your ideal body mass is critical.
Finally, cortisone injections are a way we use finally for certain patients to reduce inflammation. Basically we’re putting in steroids in the joint, inside the joint capsule to reduce inflammation and this can last from very little at all to 2-3 months for some patients and is sometimes an effective way. One of the reasons I typically recommend it is to patients, who can’t have surgery or can’t have surgery at the present time are in severe pain and also a good use of it is when you’re going on vacation and can’t have your hip treated prior to vacation. It’s a good way of enjoying your vacation.
So hopefully you find that helpful. That’s a brief discussion on non-surgical ways of dealing with hip arthritis.