Misaligned hips can affect anybody and it has a variety of causes. Living with misaligned hips can cause pain and restricted movement and often there is little that can be done to fix the problem, beyond surgery. Chiropractic care can help to reduce the pain caused by misaligned hips and reduce the need for more invasive treatments.
What are misaligned hips?
Your hips and pelvis should lie parallel to your shoulders and they shouldn't tip forwards or backward (anterior and posterior tilt). One hip should also not be higher than the other (pelvic tilt). Either of these problems can cause the pain and mobility issues associated with misaligned hips.
There are two main groups of causes for misaligned hips: structural and functional. Structural problems stem from physical differences within the person's body and can include:
scoliosis
a discrepancy in the length of the legs (one leg longer than the other
Treatments for these issues from a chiropractor won't be able to physically alter the structural issues that have caused the misaligned hips but they can help to improve your mobility and reduce your pain.
Functional issues that cause misaligned hips can be more difficult to diagnose, but they are often easier to treat and manage. Functional causes of misaligned hips can include:
overuse - athletes and people in physical jobs may favor one side of their body over the other, which can cause the muscles on one side to tighten and change the functional length of that leg
posture issues - some people instinctively carry their weight more on one side than the other, which can also cause the muscles to tighten in one le
How chiropractic care can help treat misaligned hips
Structural Causes
As we mentioned, a chiropractor may not be able to reverse the physical differences that have caused you to have misaligned hips (although they can sometimes make improvements). Chiropractic care can be an effective treatment for scoliosis, which can reduce the pain and the disability associated with it. It may even help to lessen the Cobb angle in some cases. A treatment like this can help to improve your quality of life while you are living with misaligned hips and help the issue to have less of an impact on your day-to-day functioning.
Functional causes
Chiropractic care can offer a range of treatments that can help to correct functional issues that have led to misaligned hips. There are a variety of therapeutic techniques that can a) reduce the tension and inflammation in the muscles that are causing the leg to lie higher, and b) correct the postural and overuse issues that have caused the problem in the first place.
Chiropractic care can, therefore, both reduce the symptoms of misaligned hips to give you relief from pain and disability, but they can also treat the root cause of the problem and help to prevent it from reoccurring.
If you are living with misaligned hips and it is interfering with your quality of life, chiropractic care can help. Whether the problems result from structural differences in your legs and spine, or if they are caused by functional differences in the way that you hold and use your body, there are chiropractic treatments available that can reduce both your pain and your disability.