You’ve been getting pain laying on your side in bed, and just can’t get to sleep. Sometimes a pillow between your legs helps but laying on the painful side is still waking you. You may be standing on one leg with your other hip hanging lower, or you sit with crossed legs. As a runner, running on a cambered road cam change your hip angle.
The pain on the outside of the hip can be due to inflammation of the gluteal tendon, of Gluteus Medius and Minimus, where the gluteal muscles attach. It can also be where a bursa (a fat pad called the trochanteric bursa) can become inflamed. Treatment involves strengthening of muscles around the hip, treatment of the back and pelvic joints, as this can affect Gluteal strength, Foot mobilization and strengthening, ultrasound and massage.
Apart from the above solutions, there is a newer healing technology that is making a profound difference to outside of the hip pain sufferers.
Shockwave Therapy is often useful, because the gluteal tendons are a connective tissue, not a muscle. It puts a significant shockwave through the tissues you apply it to. It is a pressure wave which brings blood flow to the area. Tendons and connective tissue do not have much blood supply and can take a long time to heal. Shockwave artificially stimulates the healing of the tendon.
Shockwave therapy can also be used on Achilles tendonitis, Plantar Fasciitis, golfer’s elbow, and rotator cuff tendon problems, and is usually most effective on long term chronic problems, rather than acute injuries.
Shockwave is not the first line of treatment for injured patients. Physiotherapy and graded exercise are more likely in the first instance. But for more stubborn conditions, shockwave has shown good results. The evidence at the moment suggests between three to five treatments are required, but most people should see an improvement within three sessions. It has a success rate up to 90%.
The Shockwave therapy is administered for a three-minute period to the affected area during consecutive weekly appointments. It is a bit of an uncomfortable sensation, like most physio hands-on treatments with a little discomfort during the treatment.
After each session, most people get a significant reduction of pain and symptoms. Long term it stimulates healing, short term it reduces pain. The best thing is, the effects are long lasting. It stops a lot of people having more invasive things like surgery or injections. The treatment is considered safe, but can produce skin reddening or bruising, short term pain, and cannot be used on people taking blood thinning medications or with bleeding disorders.
Paul Rowson - Director and Physiotherapist Back In Motion Balnarring
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