When someone comes in telling us their hip hurts, the first thing we usually ask isn’t what happened. It’s “show me where.” That question does more than you’d think. One person points to the outside of the hip. Another points toward the groin. Someone else reaches around and presses a thumb near the upper buttock, right by the sacroiliac joint. They’ll all say the same thing, “my hip hurts,” but they could be dealing with three totally different problems.

We’ve been doing this almost twenty years, and if there’s one thing that’s stuck with us, it’s this: where something hurts and where the actual problem is are often two different places.

So, can we help with hip pain? Often, yes. But it really depends on what’s behind it, and that’s worth taking the time to sort out.

Not All Hip Pain Comes From the Hip

Your hip doesn’t really work alone. It’s a big ball-and-socket joint, sure, but it’s wrapped in muscle and tendon and ligament, and right above it sits your pelvis, your sacroiliac joints, and your lower back. There’s a lot happening in a fairly small space, and all of it is connected.

Because of that, pain doesn’t always stay where it starts. Something going on in your lower back can end up feeling like it’s in your buttock or hip. A cranky sacroiliac joint can send pain along the back or side of your pelvis. And when it really is the hip joint itself, arthritis especially, that tends to show up closer to the groin or the front of the hip.

That’s part of why we don’t just treat “hip pain” as one thing and call it a day. We’d rather take a little time upfront to understand what we’re actually dealing with.

Your Hip Doesn’t Work by Itself

Think about everything your hip does in a day. Walking, climbing stairs, standing up from a chair, bending down to grab something off the floor. All of it depends on your hips, pelvis, and lower back working together, mostly without you thinking about it at all.

When one part gets stiff, something else quietly picks up the slack. A stiff hip means your lower back ends up doing more. A pelvis that’s not moving well means the muscles around your hip have to work harder to make up for it. Your body is genuinely good at finding a workaround, and that workaround can hold up for months, sometimes years, before anything actually hurts. Which is exactly how someone ends up with real hip pain without ever injuring their hip at all.

What We Actually Do When You Come in With Hip Pain

People sometimes picture this as pretty cut and dry: you walk in, get put on a table, someone adjusts your hip, you’re done. That’s not really how we do it, and honestly, we don’t think it should be. Before we touch anything, we want to understand what’s going on. We’ll check how your hip moves, look at your pelvis and lower back, see what brings your symptoms on, feel how the surrounding muscles are doing, and rule out whether a nerve’s involved.

Once we’ve got a clearer picture, treatment gets specific. If restricted movement in your lower back, pelvis, or hip is part of the problem, adjustments or other manual therapy can help get that moving again. If muscle tension is the bigger piece, massage therapy can make a real difference.

Honestly, a lot of the time it’s not chiropractic or massage. It’s both, working together.

That’s something we genuinely appreciate about how we’re set up. Our chiropractors and massage therapists work under the same roof, so when it makes sense, we’re able to come at a problem from more than one angle instead of sending you somewhere else to piece it together.

When You Might Need More Than Us

There are times chiropractic care isn’t where you should start, and we think it’s important to say so. Significant trauma, not being able to put weight on it, pain that’s getting worse fast, an unexplained fever, real weakness. Those need medical attention or imaging first, not an adjustment.

Some structural hip problems eventually need an orthopedic surgeon’s eyes on them too. Knowing when that’s the case, and being honest about it, is part of doing this job right.

We’re not trying to convince everyone who walks through our door that chiropractic is the answer for them. We’re trying to figure out whether your problem is something we can actually help with, and if it’s not, point you toward someone who can.

What the Research Backs Up

There’s decent research behind this, too, which we think matters. Clinical guidelines for hip osteoarthritis point to patient education, exercise, mobility work, and manual therapy as solid options for the right patients. One randomized trial, published in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, found that combining patient education with manual therapy from a chiropractor led to better outcomes for hip osteoarthritis patients than education alone.

(Source: Poulsen E, et al. “Patient education with or without manual therapy compared to a control group in patients with osteoarthritis of the hip.” Osteoarthritis Cartilage. 2013 Oct;21(10):1494-503.)

Where We’d Start With You

So, can we help with hip pain? Often, yes. But the real question worth asking is what’s causing yours. If it’s restricted movement in the hip, pelvis, or lower back, chiropractic care can genuinely help. If tight or irritated muscles are the bigger issue, massage might be the better fit. And if the pain’s coming from somewhere else entirely, figuring that out before you start treatment can save you a lot of wasted time and money.

That’s how we like to approach it at Body in Balance. We take the time to actually watch how you move before we recommend anything, whether that ends up being chiropractic care, massage, a mix of both, or sending you somewhere else if that’s what genuinely makes more sense for you. We’ve worked with many people around Vancouver on this exact question, and our approach has stayed pretty consistent over the years: figure out what’s actually happening, explain it in plain language, and build a plan around what you actually need. If your hip’s been bothering you, whether it just started or it’s been creeping up on you for a while, give our office a call or book online, and let’s take a look together.