Don't Stop Dancing or Doing What You Love!

As a practicing chiropractor of 36 years, I recently had a 66-year-old man, named Clark, come to me with pain in his right hip. He was an avid ballroom dancer and had been having hip discomfort for several months. His pain was constant but mild. However, if he participated in ballroom dancing, which he did once or twice a week, his hip pain flared up for a couple days afterward. He was worried about this and asked me: "Will I have to stop dancing." He related that, being single, this was one of his significant social opportunities and he enjoyed the recreation and exercise.

This article will discuss hip pain, it's causes and how conservative, chiropractic care can help give pain relief, naturally.

When I examined Clark, he had problems of two areas. The first was the actual hip joint. This joint is a ball and socket joint made up of the thigh bone (ball) and the pelvic bone (socket). This is the largest joint of the body and moves in all directions. He had injured this joint by overuse and repetition. He said he'd been practicing a certain type of dance which caused excessive stress to his right hip. He'd sprained the joint just as one with sprains their ankle or their knuckle.

He also had a problem with a joint in his pelvis called the sacroiliac joint. This is a joint that's located in the area where the rear pockets of a pair of pants would be. It is a pelvic joint between the tailbone, which is called the sacrum, and the pelvic wing bones, which are called the ileum. The sacroiliac joints are gliding joints. For Clark, this area had become misaligned and he was carrying more weight on his right lower extremity than on the other side.

Clark's care consisted of reducing the amount of strenuous dancing that irritated his sprained right hip joint. He didn't have to completely stop his ballroom dancing, but he had to cut back, for a while, to give his sprained hip joint a chance to heal.

To correct the misalignment of the pelvic sacroiliac joint, I performed chiropractic manipulations, which realigned this area and allowed him to carry his weight evenly on both extremities. A chiropractic manipulation involves a quick, gentle movement of the doctor's hands to bring about realignment of abnormally positioned bones. It is very safe and typically brings a good deal of pain relief to the patient.