Why does my hip hurt? Hip pain can have many causes and mostly doesn’t require surgery
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You can feel hip pain at any stage of life, including childhood, young adulthood and the middle years.
This can come as a surprise; many people associate hip pain with old age. It can strike fear into the hearts of those in their 40s or 50s, who may suddenly wonder if old age – or even a hip replacement – may be on the horizon much sooner than expected.
The good news is only a minority of people with hip pain will have something medically concerning or actually need surgery. Surgery should only be considered after doing a comprehensive rehabilitation exercise program.
There are lots of complex underlying reasons for hip pain, and there may be plenty you can do before you start jumping to conclusions about needing surgery.
The stiff hip vs. the overly mobile hip
In young boys and men, a condition known as femoroacetabular impingement syndrome is a common cause of hip pain. This is particularly true for those who play sports (such as football) where you need to change direction quickly and often.
This condition is caused by a bigger hip ball (also known as the femoral head) or the hip socket (the acetabulum).
This may cause pain at the front or side of the hip. The pain may get worse during movements that involve the knee coming towards the chest (such as a squat) or trending across the middle of the body (such as sitting cross-legged).
In young girls and women, hip dysplasia is particularly common.
This happens when the hip socket does not fully cover the ball of the joint. The hip can move too much, and may cause pain at the front, side or back of the hip.
However, excessive hip movement can also be caused when the connective tissue (such as the ligaments and hip capsule) get too elastic or stretchy.
Some people – such as performing artists, yogis and swimmers – may thrive on having more mobility for their artistry and sporting pursuits, but they need to be strong enough to control their excessive motion.
Because people with increased mobility are at risk of injury, it is important to maintain hip muscle strength to support the hip joint.
In middle-aged adults and older people, the most common causes of hip pain are osteoarthritis and gluteal tendinopathy.
People with osteoarthritis often experience hip pain and stiffness, and may find it hard to reach down and put on shoes and socks.
People with gluteal tendinopathy might experience pain on the outside of their hip and have problems with lying on their side, climbing stairs or standing on one leg.
My hip hurts. How worried should I be?
Well, it’s fundamentally about quality of life.
Does your hip pain make it hard to do social or community activities, perform daily tasks, or stay active? If so, then yes – you’re right to be concerned about your hip pain.
However, most hip conditions can be well managed with non-surgical treatments, such as exercises or stretches prescribed by a physiotherapist, doctor or other health-care professional. You may find you’re soon back to taking those long strolls in the park.
Whether your hip is too stiff or too mobile, start by seeking a thorough clinical examination from a trained and registered doctor or healthcare professional (such as a physiotherapist).
They may ask you to get some scans to help diagnose the cause of your hip pain. In most cases, an X-ray is used to understand the shape of the bones that form the hip joint and check for osteoarthritis. In some people, an MRI is ordered to get a more detailed understanding of the different components of the hip joint. However, it is important to remember something might show up on an MRI even in people without pain.
Treatment for hip pain
Hip pain can often be managed with or without surgery.
If you do end up needing surgery, it’s worth knowing there are lots of different types of surgical treatments. The most common are hip arthroscopy (keyhole surgery) and hip replacement. For many people, though, non-surgical treatments are effective.
These might include:
- adjusting how you exercise or do sport
- learning about how to manage symptoms
- muscle strengthening exercises.
In most cases, it’s recommended to try non-surgical treatments for at least three months to see if they help reduce pain and improve hip function before considering surgery.
Whatever you do, stay active. And remember strong bum muscles are important to maintaining healthy hips, so try to find ways to keep your glutes strong.
Charlotte Ganderton, Senior Lecturer (Physiotherapy), RMIT University and Joshua Heerey, Physiotherapist and Research Fellow (hip and knee osteoarthritis), La Trobe University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Beat Cancer Kitchen – by Chris Wark & Micah Wark
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When we eat, many things can increase our cancer risk. Some we might remember to avoid, like ultra-processed foods and red meat. Others might be more neutral when it comes to cancer, neither good nor bad.
But! Some foods also have cancer-fighting properties. Which means reducing cancer risk, and/or having an anti-proliferative effect (i.e., shrinks or at least slows growth of tumors), in the event of already having cancer.
That’s what Chris & Micah Wark are offering here; a cookbook built around anti-cancer foods—after the former beat his own cancer with the help of the latter. He had surgery, but skipped chemo, preferring to look to nutrition to keep cancer-free. Now 18 years later, and so far, so good.
The dietary advice here is entirely consistent with what we’d offer at 10almonds; it’s plant-based, and high in anti-cancer phytonutrients.
The recipes themselves (of which there are about 70-ish) are as delicious and simple as the title suggests, and/but you might want to know:
- On the one hand, many recipes are things like sauces, condiments, or dressings, which in a recipe book can sometimes feel like underdelivering on the promise of recipes when we expect full meals
- On the other hand, those things if you just purchase them ready-made are usually the things with the most ultra-processed products, thus, having anticancer homemade versions instead here can actually make a very big difference
- On the third hand, there areplenty of starters/mains/desserts too!
Bottom line: if you’re looking for an anti-cancer cookbook, this is a very good one whose ingredients aren’t obscure (which can otherwise be a problem for some books of this kind)
Click here to check out Beat Cancer Kitchen, and take good care of yourself and your loved ones!
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The Path to Longevity – by Dr. Luigi Fontana
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We’ve reviewed other “expand your healthspan” books, and while they’re good (or else we wouldn’t include them), this is top-tier, up there with Dr. Greger’s books while being more accessible (more on this later).
This book is far more informational than opinionated, and while some reviewers have described the book as motivating them, that’s not at all the tone, and it’s clear that (beyond hoping for the reader to have to information to promote a long healthy life), the author has no particular agenda to push.
One example: while he gives a whole-foods, plant-based diet a “A+” rating, he puts the (often meat/fish-heavy) paleo diet at a close “A-“, depending on the animal products chosen (which can swing it a lot, and he discusses this in some detail).
In the category of criticism… This reviewer has none. Sometimes it seemed something was going unaddressed, but it would be addressed later.
Stylistically, the text is easy-reading and/but has a lot of references to hard science, complete with charts, diagrams, and so forth. The impression that this reviewer got is that Dr. Fontana took pains to convey as much science as possible, with (unlike Dr. Greger) as little jargon as possible. And that goes a long way.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for a “healthy aging” book that has a lot more science than “copy the Blue Zone supercentenarians and hope” without being so scientifically dense as “How Not To Die” or “How Not To Age“, then this is the book for you.
Click here to check out The Path to Longevity, and optimize the path you take!
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Paracetamol pack sizes and availability are changing. Here’s what you need to know
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Changes are coming into effect from February 1 about how paracetamol is sold in Australia.
This mainly affects pack sizes of paracetamol sold outside pharmacies and how paracetamol is accessed in pharmacies.
The changes, announced by Australia’s drug regulator, are in line with moves internationally to reduce the harms of liver toxicity and the risk of overdose.
However, there are no new safety concerns when paracetamol is used as directed. And children’s products are not affected.
Bowonpat Sakaew/Shutterstock What is paracetamol?
Paracetamol is commonly sold under brand names such as Panadol, Dymadon and Panamax. It’s used to treat mild pain and fever for short periods or can be prescribed for chronic (long-term) pain.
Millions of packs of this cheap and accessible medicine are sold in Australia every year.
Small packs (up to 20 tablets) have been available from supermarkets and other retailers such as petrol stations. Larger packs (up to 100 tablets) are only available from pharmacies.
Paracetamol is relatively safe when used as directed. However, at higher-than-recommended doses, it can cause liver toxicity. In severe cases and when left untreated, this can be lethal.
Why are the rules changing?
In 2022, we wrote about how the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) was considering changes to paracetamol access because of an increase in people going to hospital with paracetamol poisoning.
An expert review it commissioned found there were about 40–50 deaths every year from paracetamol poisoning between 2007 and 2020. Between 2009–10 and 2016–17, hospital admissions for this increased (from 8,617 to 11,697), before reducing in 2019–20 (8,723). Most admissions were due to intentional self-poisonings, and about half of these were among people aged ten to 24.
After the report, the TGA consulted with the public to work out how to prevent paracetamol poisonings.
Options included reducing pack sizes, limiting how many packs could be bought at once, moving larger packs behind the pharmacy counter and restricting access by age.
Responses were mixed. Although responses supported the need to prevent poisonings, there were concerns about how changes might affect:
- people with chronic pain, especially those in regional areas, where it may be harder to access pharmacies and, therefore, larger packs
- people on limited incomes, if certain products were made prescription-only.
Although deaths from paracetamol poisoning are tragic and preventable, they are rare considering how much paracetamol Australians use. There is less than one death due to poisoning for every million packs sold.
Because of this, it was important the TGA addressed concerns about poisonings while making sure Australians still had easy access to this essential medicine.
If you buy large packs of paracetamol for chronic pain, you’ll need to go to the pharmacy counter. StratfordProductions/Shutterstock So what’s changing?
The key changes being introduced relate to new rules about the pack sizes that can be sold outside pharmacies, and the location of products sold in pharmacies.
From February 1, packs sold in supermarkets and places other than pharmacies will reduce from a maximum 20 tablets to 16 tablets per pack. These changes bring Australia in line with other countries. These include the United Kingdom, which restricted supermarket packs to 16 tablets in 1998, and saw reductions in poisonings.
In all jurisdictions except Queensland and Western Australia, packs sold in pharmacies larger than 50 tablets will move behind the pharmacy counter and can only be sold under pharmacist supervision. In Queensland and WA, products containing more than 16 tablets will only be available from behind the pharmacy counter and sold under pharmacist supervision.
In all jurisdictions, any packs containing more than 50 tablets will need to be sold in blister packs, rather than bottles.
Several paracetamol products are not affected by these changes. These include children’s products, slow-release formulations (for example, “osteo” products), and products already behind the pharmacy counter or only available via prescription.
What else do I need to know?
These changes have been introduced to reduce the risk of poisonings from people exceeding recommended doses. The overall safety profile of paracetamol has not changed.
Paracetamol is still available from all current locations and there are no plans to make it prescription-only or remove it from supermarkets altogether. Many companies have already been updating their packaging to ensure there are no gaps in supply.
The reduction in pack sizes of paracetamol available in supermarkets means a pack of 16 tablets will now last two days instead of two-and-a-half days if taken at the maximum dose (two tablets, four times a day). Anyone in pain that does not improve after short-term use should speak to their pharmacist or GP.
For people who use paracetamol regularly for chronic pain, it is more cost-effective to continue buying larger packs from pharmacies. As larger packs (50+ tablets) need to be kept out of sight, you will need to ask at the pharmacy counter. Pharmacists know that for many people it’s appropriate to use paracetamol daily for chronic pain.
Natasa Gisev, Clinical pharmacist and Scientia Associate Professor at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney and Ria Hopkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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When Did You Last Have a Cognitive Health Check-Up?
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When Did You Last Have a Cognitive Health Check-Up?
Regular health check-ups are an important part of a good health regime, especially as we get older. But after you’ve been prodded, probed, sampled and so forth… When did you last have a cognitive health check-up?
Keeping on top of things
In our recent Monday Research Review main feature about citicoline, we noted that it has beneficial effects for a lot of measures of cognitive health.
And that brought us to realize: just how on top of this are we?
Your writer here today could tell you what her sleep was like on any night in the past year, what her heart rate was like, her weight, and all that. Moods too! There’s an app for that. But cognitive health? My last IQ test was in 2001, and I forget when my last memory test was.
It’s important to know how we’re doing, or else how to we know if there has been some decline? We’ve talked previously about the benefits of brain-training of various kinds to improve cognition, so in some parts we’ll draw on the same resources today, but this time the focus is on getting quick measurements that we can retest regularly (mark the calendar!)
Some quick-fire tests
These tests are all free, quick, and accessible. Some of them will try to upsell you on other (i.e. paid) services; we leave that to your own discretion, but the things we’ll be using today are free.
Test your verbal memory
This one’s a random word list generator. It defaults to 12 words, but you can change that if you like. Memorize the words, and then test yourself by seeing how many you can write down from memory. If it gets too easy, crank up the numbers.
Test your visual memory
This one’s a series of images; the test is to click to say whether you’ve seen this exact image previously in the series or not.
Test your IQ
This one’s intended to be general purpose intelligence; in reality, IQ tests have their flaws too, but it’s not a bad metric to keep track of. Just don’t get too hung up on the outcome, and remember, your only competition is yourself!
Test your attention / focus
This writer opened this and this three other attention tests (to get you the best one) before getting distracted, noting the irony, and finally taking the test. Hopefully you can do better!
Test your creativity
This one’s a random object generator. Give yourself a set period of time (per your preference, but make a note of the time you allow yourself, so that you can use the same time period when you retest yourself at a later date) in which to list as many different possible uses for the item.
Test your musical sense
This one’s a pitch recognition test. So, with the caveat that it is partially testing your hearing as well as your cognition, it’s a good one to take and regularly retest in any case.
How often should you retest?
There’s not really any “should” here, but to offer some advice:
- If you take them too often, you might find you get bored of doing so and stop, essentially burning out.
- If you don’t take them regularly, you may forget, lose this list of tests, etc.
- Likely a good “sweet spot” is quarterly or six-monthly, but there’s nothing wrong with testing annually either.
It’s all about the big picture, after all.
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Growing Better Not Older – by Dr. Sean O’Mara
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Of course we will, all being well, continue to progress through time and grow chronologically older, but biological age in all its facets can certainly be modified (in either direction!), and that’s what this book is about.
Dr. O’Mara sets out his 10 principles of health optimization, and then explains, chapter by chapter, how to go about each of these.
The book is strong on advice, and light to non-existent on justification. Now, this is not necessarily a big problem as his advice is sound and is consistent with good up-to-date science (indeed, we’ve written on all 10 topics at 10almonds, and have given similar recommendations in each case), but he tends not to take up the time to actually show where the advice came from. Which is odd really, as in a book rather than a newsletter, one can take as much time/space as one wants to do that. As such, no bibliography. There is a resource section, though it’s in large part an upsell effort for the author’s subscribable programs.
Bottom line: good advice, minimal background information or sourcing, opportunity to learn more—albeit for a price.
Click here to check out Growing Better Not Older, and grow in health as you go!
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Type Of Olive Oil Does Matter, For Brain & Gut Health!
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On the topic of olive oil and its virginity or lack thereof, we have previously written to answer the question: Is “Extra Virgin” Worth It?
That article continues to be great and correct per the most up-to-date science of which we’re aware, and in fewest words, the overall conclusion was that the “extra” part doesn’t matter too much, but the “virgin” part definitely does. Indeed, we wrote:
If you enjoy olive oil, then springing for extra virgin is worth it if that’s not financially onerous, both for health reasons and taste.
However, if mere “virgin” is what’s available, it’s no big deal to have that instead; it still has a very similar nutritional profile, and most of the same benefits.
Don’t settle for less than “virgin”, though.
While some virgin olive oils aren’t marked as such, if it says “refined” or “blended”, then skip it. These will have been extracted by chemical means and/or blended with completely different oils (e.g. canola, which has a very different nutritional profile), and sometimes with a dash of virgin or extra virgin, for the taste and/or so that they can claim in big writing on the label something like:
a blend of
EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL
and other oils…despite having only a tiny amount of extra virgin olive oil in it.
(For more on this, do see our previous main feature about it, here)
Meanwhile, we shall press on the topic of specific brain and gut benefits of virgin olive oil (extra or not):
Pressed for the very first time 🎶
It’s already known that olives themselves are good for brain health:
How Olives Can Help Protect Your Brain ← they do it by means of hydroxytyrosol, which really is much healthier than it sounds!
And, for that matter: Olive oil is healthy. Turns out olive leaf extract may be good for us too
So, what’s the latest news?
Researchers (Dr. Estefanía Toledo et al.) followed 656 adults with metabolic syndrome aged 55–75 years for 2 years to examine the effects of olive oil type on gut microbiota and cognitive change.
And by “type”, here the distinction was “virgin olive oil” (VOO) vs “common olive oil” (COO).
As for the effects each had:
- Gut microbiota diversity: higher VOO intake was associated with greater alpha diversity (inverse Simpson and Chao1 indices) (that’s good), while higher COO intake was associated with lower alpha diversity, with no significant diversity differences across total olive oil tertiles.
- In particular, 19 bacterial genera were associated with olive oil intake, and higher VOO and total olive oil intake were linked to reduced abundance of Adlercreutzia, which reduction was associated with improvements in cognitive function. On which note…
- Cognitive outcomes: higher total and VOO intake were associated with modest but statistically significant improvements in general cognitive function, attention, executive function, and global cognition, while higher COO intake was associated with worse changes across several domains.
- For this one, each 10 g/day increase in total or VOO intake was positively associated with beneficial cognitive changes, but each 10 g/day increase in COO intake was associated with accelerated cognitive decline.
In case you’re wondering how the cognitive outcomes were tested,
❝Cognitive function was assessed using the clock drawing test, mini-mental state examination (MMSE), verbal fluency test, digit span test, and trail making test.
A z-score was calculated for each cognitive test at baseline and follow-up. These scores were aggregated to generate composite scores for neurocognitive domains such as executive function and attention. Clock drawing test and MMSE scores were combined into a general cognitive function score. A global cognitive function score was computed by adding or subtracting individual z-scores based on whether higher scores indicated better or worse performance.
The primary outcome was the change in composite cognitive scores from baseline to follow-up.❞
You can read the paper in full, here: Total and different types of olive oil consumption, gut microbiota, and cognitive function changes in older adults
Want to learn more?
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- Gut microbiota diversity: higher VOO intake was associated with greater alpha diversity (inverse Simpson and Chao1 indices) (that’s good), while higher COO intake was associated with lower alpha diversity, with no significant diversity differences across total olive oil tertiles.
