Hip Muscle Strains

Because our hip muscles work so hard in many daily activities, a strain can affect many of the things we do. A muscle strain in the hip means that there is damage to the muscle fibers and possibly their associated tendons in the hip area. This can happen with a seemingly innocent movement, like lifting, changing direction suddenly, and twisting. Many athletes will strain a muscle as a result of their sport, but weekend warriors who are active only occasionally are more vulnerable to muscle injuries, especially if they don't warm up and stretch properly.

There are many muscles in the hip that move down the thigh to the knee and across the abdomen or buttocks: the quadriceps muscles in the front, hamstring muscles in the back, and adductor muscles on the inside. These muscles are responsible for the trunk and legs' multi-directional movements.

The muscles primarily responsible for bringing the leg forward from the hip are the psoas and rectus femoris. The hamstring and gluteus maximus bring the leg behind the body from the hip. The adductor magnus and adductor longus draw the leg to this inside of the body. The gluteus medius, gluteus minimus and tensor fascia lata bring the leg towards the outside of the body. They are also the group of muscles responsible for stabilizing the hip, especially with weight bearing activities. The deep muscles of the hip include the piriformis, the obturator internus, the obturator externus, the gemellus superior, the gemellus inferior and the quadratus femoris.

When straining a muscle in the hip area, it is common that more than one muscle and possibly the associated tendon can be affected. There are varying degrees of hip muscle injuries. Some are mild and can heal well with conservative treatment. Severe muscle injuries, also known as ruptures, are usually a result of a traumatic injury such as a fall or an accident and may accompany a fracture.

Hip Muscle Injury Symptoms

Muscle Strain

This is also known as a 'Grade I' tear. A strain is classified as the overstretching of the fibers of the muscle. Muscle strain feels like discomfort within the hip area as opposed to acute pain.

A mild muscle strain can be treated with cold compression, ultrasound, and Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy (BFST^®) to improve the health of the muscle tissue and restore the elasticity to reduce the risk of restraining it again.

Muscle Tear

This is also known as a 'Grade II' tear and is an actual tearing of the fibers in the muscle and perhaps its associated tendon. It would feel like a sharp pain within the hip, and you may hear a tearing sound at the time of the injury. There will be bruising in the torn muscle area in the days following the injury. This grade of strain can also be effectively treated with cold compression, ultrasound therapy and BFST^®. It is recommended that you allow your hip and leg muscles to rest when you can to allow the muscle tear to heal.

Muscle Rupture

This is also known as a 'Grade III' tear. When a muscle ruptures, or tears completely, you will feel a very sharp pain within the hip and you may hear or feel a 'pop'. There would be a significant amount of pain when attempting to move the leg and your range of motion will be limited. There will be noticeable bruising, swelling and a change in the appearance of the hip in the hours or days following the rupture. Treatment of a complete tear may require hip surgery to rejoin the muscle tissue at the point of the tear.

Cold compression, ultrasound therapy and BFST^® can be used prior to surgery to minimize tissue damage, resulting in a less invasive surgery. These therapies used after surgery will also help to reduce recovery time and will leave the muscle and surrounding tissue healthier, stronger, and less prone to future injury.

Causes of a Hip Muscle Injury

• Not warming up properly
• Inactivity followed by sudden activity
  (i.e. a game of football on the weekend)
• A traumatic fall or accident
• Muscle fatigue
• Activity during cold weather, which causes muscles to contract

How To Treat Your Hip Muscle Injury

The trick with any muscle injury is getting it to heal with minimal scar tissue formation on the muscle fibres - something ultrasound therapy is great at! Even with optimum healing, there is always less elasticity in a previously injured muscle. This can cause the muscle to hurt during exercise and everyday activities. However, if you heal your injured muscle efficiently and quickly, your chance of re-injury later on is much lower.

Although it is recommended that you rest your hip muscles following injury it can be difficult to do as they are essential for walking and daily activities. Fortunately, there are healing tool that can help treat an strained hip muscle and speed up the healing process so you can get back to a life without pain and risk of further injury.

Cold compression, therapeutic ultrasound and BFST^® will reduce pain and swelling, treat scar tissue, and promote healing of your hip muscles faster and more completely than any other methods available.

Freezie Wrap^® Cold Compression Therapy

To decrease inflammation and relieve the pain of a hip muscle pull, tear, or rupture doctor's recommend cold compression therapy. Cold compression therapy within the first 72 hours of a hip muscle injury or surgical repair is an effective way to relieve pain and swelling while limiting the amount of damage done to your tissue. In addition, cold compression therapy can reduce, or even eliminate, the need for NSAIDs that can be harmful to your body.

The Back/Hip Freezie Wrap^® is the cold compression tool you need to treat your sore hip muscle in an effective and convenient way. It is so versatile you can also use it to treat any pain you may be experiencing in your back or legs as well.

The Back/Hip Freezie Wrap^® uses a supercharged cooling gel pack, that chills in the fridge, not in the freezer like ice or other freezer packs, giving you deep cold therapy without the risk of 'cold burns' or cryoburn. The medical-grade wrap delivers cold right where you need it.

Cold compression therapy works by interrupting and slowing nerve and cell function around the area of your injured muscle and reducing swelling that can block blood vessels. This is important because once blood vessels are blocked or damaged, they can no longer carry oxygen and nutrients to your hip and tissue cells begin to break-down. Without cold compression therapy, cellular break-down and tissue damage continues as the cells do not get the oxygen they need to survive.

By limiting the amount of damage done to your muscle, you limit the amount of healing that needs to occur. This is a very important step to heal your hip faster and with less pain!

Ultrasound Therapy

Ultrasound therapy is a great therapeutic option to decrease inflammation, pain and soft tissue damage. Therapeutic ultrasonic waves increase tissue elasticity while increasing blood flow to your quadriceps muscles, hamstring muscles, or adductor muscles. This cleans the injured area by flushing away damaged tissue and reducing the inflammation while opening up the blood vessels to begin healing.

Not only does ultrasound aid in the duration of healing your muscle tissue, it helps to prevent long term complications. Osteoarthritis, hip dislocation, chronic pain, reduced range of motion, and bursitis are some of the more common long term complications that can occur when hip injuries go untreated. By treating your injured muscles with ultrasound, scar tissue becomes softer and other tissue around the acetabular joint becomes stronger reducing the risk of chronic problems in the future.

If you are experiencing pain in your back, knee, ankle or leg because of your hip injury, you can use therpeutic ultrasound to treat these areas as well. With hip injuries you often readjust your posture and gait to take the pressure off your sore side. This puts extra pressure on other parts of your body and can cause strain. Using a home ultrasound will allow you to treat all the areas that need to heal easily and help you maintain a healthier body.

During the healing process, scar tissue builds up to 'repair' the damaged tissue. Unfortunately, scar tissue can bind your muscle fibers and other tissue together abnormally around the hip joint. The inflexible scar tissue causes more hip pain and limits range of motion in the entire joint, making it difficult to rotate your hip and lift your leg.

If scar tissue is left untreated, your hip may stiffen making movement difficult and in some cases, impossible. At the very least, scar tissue leaves your muscle and acetabular joint weaker, leaving your hip at greater risk of further injury. Fortunately, you can treat your hip joint with MendMeShop^® Ultrasound to soften scar tissue and improve the motion and flexibility in your hip.

Ultrasound can also be used to administer therapeutic medicines deep into your injured muscle and hip joint. This is a process known as phonophoresis. Ultrasound therapy with phonophoresis is rapidly becoming more popular than ultrasound therapy alone.

Therapeutic ultrasound with phonophoresis is safe, convenient, and easy and requires 10 minutes per treatment. It is based on a form of deep tissue therapy, which is generated through high frequency sound waves (that we can not hear). These waves send micro vibrations into your body and carry medicated molecules within the ultrasound gel deep into your muscle tissue to enhance your ultrasound therapy. Ultrasound waves and medicated ultrasound gel penetrate deep to relax your muscles, decrease inflammation and accelerate your recovery rate, so you can return to your daily activities as soon as possible.

Using MendMeShop^® Lavender Infusion Ultrasound Gel during your ultrasound therapy gives you 2 therapies in 1. You get the benefit of the regenerating sound waves from the ultrasound device itself AND the added bonus of the therapeutic ingredients inside the gel being delivered into your muscle and hip where it is most effective to reduce your pain and heal. 1 FREE bottle of MendMeShop^® Lavender Infusion Ultrasound Gel comes with every MendMeShop^® Ultrasound Therapy System and it contains the therapeutic essential oils of natural Bulgarian lavender, peppermint, eucalyptus, and menthol.

Once the inflammation in your muscle strain has been reduced, nourishing and strengthening your hip, lower back, upper leg and surrounding tissue is recommended. Using blood flow stimulation therapy will speed your recovery and heal your muscle fibers more completely preparing the muscle and acetabular joint for strengthening exercises. Talk to your doctor or physical therapist to find out which exercises are appropriate for your situation.

Inferno Wrap^® Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy

Complete your muscle strain treatments with Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy, or BFST^®. It is the most natural way to speed healing of your damaged muscle fibers and surrounding tissue and BFST^® reduces the risk of atrophy (weakening of the muscles) in your upper leg muscles. BFST^® enhances your body's own healing process by simply increasing the amount of blood that flows to your hip and leg to improve the health of your tissue by delivering an abundance of nutrients to the area.

When you stop moving your hip because it hurts the amount of blood that flows naturally to your quadriceps muscles, hamstring muscles, or adductor muscles is reduced, limiting your body's natural ability to heal itself.

By treating your hip and leg with BFST^® you can increase your body's blood supply to the muscle and increase your body's natural healing power.

An Inferno Wrap^® is the tool you need to treat your sore muscle strain because it speeds healing and relaxes the surrounding muscles. With BFST^®, tissues are safely and gently stimulated. Your body responds with a rapid increase in blood flow to the area, increasing the supply of oxygen and nutrients to injured tissue cells to promote healing. The Back/Hip Inferno Wrap^® from MendMeShop^® provides effective, non-invasive, non-addictive pain relief and healing with no side effects.

In addition, the improved blood flow helps reduce the risk of atrophy (muscle weakness and/or deterioration) in your muscles. When you stop moving your leg and hip due to pain, your muscles and other tissue can become weaker and dead cells and toxins in the area can cause further tissue deterioration - this can lead to atrophy in your quadriceps, hamstrings and adductor muscles. The Back/Hip Inferno Wrap^® is an amazing healing tool that can be used to treat your entire body.

By clearing the area of toxins and increasing the amount of oxygen and nutrients to your hip, injured muscle, and leg muscles, the risk of atrophy is greatly reduced. Keeping your hip and leg tissue as healthy as possible throughout the healing process will allow you to improve strength again once your pain has gone and your iliopsoas muscle, iliotibial band muscle, or ischial muscle has healed.

With these 3 easy-to-use, pain-free, home therapies from MendMyHip, pain is significantly reduced, tissue heals faster, and there's an incredible improvement in the range of motion of your hip. The more diligent you are with your treatment and rehabilitation, the faster you will see successful results!

We've helped thousands of people treat their painful injuries and conditions to get them back on the road to a pain-free life!

Our customers have tried other common hip treatments, such as cortisone injections, pain killers, physical therapy, NSAIDs, and simply staying off their feet to give their hip the rest it needs, all without lasting results - until they found our incredible therapies! In addition, our customers include physicians, professional athletes, sports trainers and coaches, physical therapists, and nurses. These professionals rely on products from MendMyHip to treat their patients, players, and themselves. Click here to read more about their experience with MendMyHip!

Please be aware that this information is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. CALL YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER IMMEDIATELY IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider before using any of our outstanding products to make sure they're right for you and your condition or if you have any questions regarding a medical condition. It is recommended that you see your doctor for a proper diagnosis as there are many injuries and conditions that could be the cause of your pain.

Or email us at service@MendMyHip.com