How to relieve hip pain without changing your mattress
The way to relieve hip pain without changing your mattress is to loosen the muscles around the hip joint that have tightened and become stiff.
For example, if you feel pain when lying on your back, it is because the stiff muscles at the front of the hip joint are being stretched in that position. In that case, loosening the muscles at the front of the hip joint can help resolve the problem.
If you are thinking about solving hip pain during sleep by changing your mattress, it is important to first understand how that hip pain is occurring. Without knowing the mechanism behind the pain, you will not be able to choose the right mattress.
On the other hand, once you look into the underlying cause of your hip pain, you may find that changing your mattress is not necessarily the answer.
- Have been diagnosed with hip osteoarthritis
- Have pain not only in the hip joint but also in the lower back
- Have received treatments such as massage
The key to recovery is understanding your body’s habits.
People with hip pain often have characteristic movement patterns and joint restrictions. By identifying them, you can pinpoint the cause and see the most efficient and shortest path to improvement. Let’s look at the body habits that can lead to hip pain.
1. Difficulty with external rotation of the hip joint
The first is the movement of twisting the hip joint outward.
The illustration shows a test of a movement called external rotation, in which the hip joint twists outward. If external rotation is difficult for you, it becomes hard to bring your knees closer to the floor. Normally, when lowering the knees toward the floor, they should come down far enough that only one or two fists can fit between the knees and the floor.
Many people with hip pain tend to keep their toes pointed inward, and this is often because external rotation is difficult for them.
Why is poor external rotation related to hip pain?
If external rotation is difficult, you tend to walk with your toes turned inward. This creates tension in the muscles at the front of the hip joint, and over time those muscles become stiff and stop stretching properly.
As a result, your balance becomes disrupted and the strain on your hip joints increases.
Why is external rotation difficult?
External rotation becomes difficult when the gluteus maximus, the large muscle in the buttocks, is weak. In modern life, there are not many situations in which the gluteus maximus is used actively, and muscles that are left unused only grow weaker.
In addition, stiffness in the inner thighs can interfere with external rotation.
Spending long hours sitting can make the inner thighs stiff.
2. Slouched posture
The second is a slouched, forward-leaning posture.
The illustration shows which points are out of place compared with ideal posture. When the hip joints, shoulders, and ears line up on one straight line, that is considered good posture that places less strain on the hips.
People who struggle with hip pain tend to stand and walk with their head pushed forward and their body leaning forward.
Why is slouching related to hip pain?
When you slouch, you end up walking with your head jutting forward. This shortens your stride and makes you land on your toes first, even though ideally you should land on your heels. It also causes you to rely too much on the muscles at the front of your thighs, which leads to standing with your knees slightly bent.
These combined effects of a slouched posture compress and contract the muscles at the front of the hip joint. When this strain continues, pain begins to appear.
Why does posture become slouched?
It is the result of continuing to keep your head and face positioned forward. There can be many causes, including driving and smartphone use. In some cases, it also comes from fear of pain.
3. Excessive pelvic tilt
The third is pelvic tilt.
The pelvis is designed to tilt both forward and backward, but when the tilt becomes too strong in either direction, pain can occur. Younger, more active people and those with severe hip pain often have a pelvis that tilts too far forward. This is known as a swayback posture, with the buttocks pushed backward.
By contrast, older people often have a pelvis that tilts backward and a rounded back posture.
Why is hip tilt related to hip pain?
Let’s use anterior pelvic tilt as an example. When the pelvis tilts too far forward, it compresses the muscles at the front of the hip joint, which leads to muscle tightening.
Why is my pelvic tilt too large?
Again using anterior pelvic tilt as an example, when the thigh muscles known as the quadriceps are tight, the lower back becomes overly arched. These are among the strongest muscles in the body and can have enough influence to change the direction of the pelvis.
Other possible causes include tension in the psoas major, or weakness in the gluteus maximus or abdominal muscles.
Treatment record
Let’s look at this record to see how hip pain improved step by step.
- Symptoms: Hip and knee pain for the past year. Numbness in the hands and feet.
- Age: In her 50s
- Work: Spends long hours standing.
- What she tried: Was examined at a hospital and took medication.
Putting the course of events in chronological order, it looks like this:
- She had numbness in her toes starting 18 years ago, especially when sleeping.
- Hip and knee pain began about a year ago.
- She was examined at the hospital, but there was no improvement.
Various tests are performed to identify the cause. Each part of the body has its own normal range of motion. If a part cannot move as it should, or if one side moves less easily than the other, that may be contributing to the pain.
Examination results
The examination showed that some parts of the lower body were not functioning properly.
We checked the movement of the hip joint.
When the leg is twisted outward, the painful left hip has a smaller range of motion than the right side. In addition, the patient feels tightness around the hip joint and is aware that the movement is difficult.
One possible cause is tension in the muscles around the pelvis.
Next, we check whether there is a problem with the pelvis.
Although the patient complains of hip pain, I do not begin by touching the hip joint itself. There are two reasons for this.
① It can worsen inflammation and lead to more clinic visits
Massage can temporarily improve circulation, so it may feel good at first. However, the muscles causing the pain are inflamed, and pressing on them can make that inflammation worse. When that happens, the pain continues constantly, and during treatment it becomes impossible to tell whether the symptoms are actually improving or not.
If you cannot tell on the spot whether the symptoms have improved, you end up saying, “That’s all for today. Let’s wait and see for a while,” which leads to more clinic visits. That extra burden on the patient is not desirable.
② The cause is not necessarily where the pain is felt
When there is a problem in the hip joint, the cause is often located elsewhere, such as in the lower back or legs. Loosening the muscles around the hip joint may ease the pain temporarily, but it does not address the root cause.
In some cases, the muscles causing the pain are not muscles that should be loosened. If that is the case, more treatment can actually make the pain worse.
For these two reasons, even if the patient complains of hip pain, we do not start by touching the hip joint itself.
Treatment details
Here we introduce the seitai treatment approach.
I encourage patients to actively work on movements they find difficult. In this case, tight thigh muscles made it hard for the patient to get into the position shown in the illustration, so I continued adjusting the body until that position became possible.
Of course, when people are in pain, some stop moving the hip joint and try to stay still out of fear that the pain may get worse.
However, as long as there is a joint with a restricted range of motion, the strain on the hip joint will not go away.
You cannot move properly while pain is present, so the first step is to provide treatment that reduces the pain. For some people, the pain disappears at this stage.
In the next step, once the pain has eased, you begin challenging the movements you are not good at within a safe and manageable range. By the time those difficult movements are no longer difficult, the original problem has been resolved.
The patient tried again the same movements that had caused pain during the pre-treatment examination, and confirmed that the hip pain and numbness in the hands and feet had disappeared.
Although some tightness remained behind the knee, I explained that it was not a problem because the discomfort had already been reduced to about 20% of its original level, and I suggested starting daily stretches. After this, the patient received two more treatments, and care was completed.
When you have osteoarthritis of the hip, there are some things you should be careful of in your daily life to prevent the symptoms from progressing and to keep your hip joint in good condition for a long time.
①Walking around with your smartphone
If you look at the posture of people walking while using a smartphone, you will see that without exception they are leaning forward and walking with their heads pointing forward. This forward-headed posture causes them to walk with narrow strides and their toes touching the ground first. This way of walking puts strain not only on the hip joints but also on the knee joints, so the aim is to land on your heels and walk using the muscles on the inside of your thighs.
② Sports that use the supporting foot or jumping sports
People with osteoarthritis should avoid internal rotation and flexion of the hip joint. Sports that require a supporting leg, such as tennis and table tennis, should be avoided as much as possible. Repeated internal rotation of one hip joint puts a lot of strain on the hip joint. Sports that involve bouncing, such as dancing and volleyball, also put a lot of strain on the hip joint.
③Sit on a soft sofa
For those with severe symptoms, the muscles around the hip joint are very stiff, and if they sit with their hip joints deeply bent, the hip joints may become even stiffer.
Be careful not to sit in a chair with a high seat or avoid a soft seat, and avoid positions that cause deep flexion of the hip joints.
Even if your hip pain symptoms are mild, avoid soft sofas. This causes your pelvis to tilt backward, and the muscles in your buttocks to support your upper body, which tenses up your buttocks and puts strain on your hip joints.
If you sit with your pelvis upright and not leaning against the backrest, your upper body will be supported by your sitting bones, which will help prevent the muscles in your buttocks from becoming stiff.
However, if you continue to sit without using a backrest, your back muscles will become fatigued and your posture will deteriorate.
Ideally, you should stand up every 15 minutes, but if that's difficult, try taking occasional breaks by leaning back in your chair, while maintaining a sitting position with your pelvis upright.
Steps to solve the problem with seitai
The way you use your body, shaped over the years through play and sports in childhood, accidents, childbirth, and many other life events, has created the physical condition you have today.
If you are in pain now, that is simply your body telling you that there has been a problem in the way you have been using it up to this point.
The first stage of recovery is to stop the pain. Once the cause has been identified through examination and treatment is given accordingly, the pain will begin to ease. Only after the pain has improved are you ready to learn how to use your body correctly.
The second stage is learning proper body use. This changes both the body and the brain so that you do not return to your old condition.
Because physical pain is often related to daily habits, stretching and exercise become necessary. Just like brushing your teeth, steady consistency is important.
If you want to resolve your pain, the first step is to stop the pain. Stretching and exercise come after that.
