When Hip Pain Sabotages Your Sleep
Hip-hip hooray? NO WAY! Not at nighttime, anyway…
If you fancy sleeping on your side, as I do, you’ll find your sleep is interrupted—at best—and prevented—at worse—if you’re dealing with chronic hip pain. Hip pain does not discriminate among hosts. It can be experienced by accomplished athletes or by the more sedentary among us, by those in their twenties, and by those four times their age.
Here are some possible reasons for experiencing hip pain: low back issues which migrate south into in the hip region, hip arthritis (bony degenerative changes), hip bursitis (inflammation of a fluid-filled sack which lies between bone and tendons, typically caused by hip and pelvic muscle imbalances). Whatever the underlying source, the fact remains that while you’re (hopefully) seeking a cure; you do need to get some restorative shut eye tonight!
There are three helps I always recommend my patients implement at bedtime while we are working towards a full resolve of their hip pain.
- If possible, try to sleep on the opposite side of your painful hip. (This might take a few nights of retraining.)
- Whichever side you chose to sleep on: Place a pillow lengthwise between your legs (from your groin to your ankles) in order to unweight the heaviness of your top leg. If you’re tall, use a king-sized pillow for extra length.
- If you feel you must lie on the side of your painful hip: Fold a small towel or soft, thin blanket and place it along your “mattress lying” side—from just above the top of your “hip” (pelvis bone) to your underarm area. This supportive method will unweight the “heft” of your trunk from your painful hip, relieving much of the pinpointed pressure on the side of your hip.
With these helpful modifications in place, my patients typically report being able to fall asleep with greater ease and sleep more comfortably throughout the night. I do hope they work for you should you find yourself in a similar predicament.