Ease Your Hip Pain: 7 Home Remedies for Relief

Fitness in Midlife on July 3, 2024

Woman with her hip pain highlighed in red.

Whether standing, walking, or climbing stairs, our hips are needed for just about every physical activity! So, when the joint we need for everyday movement isn’t at its best, neither are we.

While you should always visit your doctor for chronic or severe pain, there are some hip pain relief treatment options you can try on your own. There are a range of options, from light exercises to homeopathic remedies.

Here, we’ve compiled nine of our favorite tips for relieving hip pain at home, plus signs that it’s time to talk to your doctor.

1. Start Your Day with the Right Stretches for Mobility

A senior woman doing a cobra yoga pose in her living room.

It is fairly common to get tight hip flexor muscles if you spend a lot of time sitting, running, or biking. Because everything in your body is connected, you’ll need to work the hip flexors and the surrounding muscles and joints that support them.

For example, when your hips feel tight, it can cause overuse of the spine, resulting in pain in your lower back. Adding hip stretches and mobility exercises will support the muscles and joints in the back and spine.

To improve mobility, try the following exercises and stretches:

2. Work Your Thigh Muscles

Older woman doing chair squats on a yoga mat.

Your thigh muscles help support your hips more than you may think! If you suffer from arthritis in particular, strengthening those thigh muscles will help support your hips more and hopefully lessen your pain.

Here are a couple of workouts to help strengthen your thighs:

3. Exercise as Much as Possible (But Avoid High-Impact Workouts)

Middle aged couple power walking outdoors

Movement, in general, is also a great way to strengthen a weak hip. Try lower-impact options like walking or cycling, and avoid high-impact activities like running and jumping. Remember, low impact does not have to mean ineffective!

Try the following low-impact exercises to help ease hip pain:

Tip: If stability is a problem for you, feel free to grab a chair, couch, or even the wall to hold onto while performing any standing exercises. The more you exercise and work on mobility, the more you will develop stability and balance!

4. Try Water Aerobics

Summer is the perfect time to take advantage of pool workouts!

Swimming and water exercises are amazing, low-impact exercises. The body is unweighted in water, making it easier to exercise for longer, with less impact. Plus, resistance in water can be anywhere from 4 to 42 times greater than on land, making a pool or body of water a natural weight-training machine.

To get started, check out our favorite pool exercises for seniors.

5. Know When to Use Hot or Cold Therapy

Two blue ice packs on top of a white towel next to a bottle of water.

It’s helpful to understand when to use hot vs. cold therapy to treat your hip pain.

Cold Therapy

For new injuries or acute pain, cold therapy with ice or a cooling gel pack is ideal:

Ice not only numbs the pain but will decrease inflammation and swelling.
You do not want to use heat to treat acute injuries because it can increase inflammation, delaying your healing.

Heat Therapy

For chronic injuries or arthritis pain, you’ll want to use heat therapy, such as soaking in a warm tub or applying a hot compress or heating pad:

Heat works best for chronic pain because it increases blood flow and helps relax and soothe those tight or painful joints.
If you have chronic pain, it’s best to apply heat before a workout, not after, as that can aggravate your muscles.

6. Maintain a Healthy Weight

Close up of a foot stepping onto a scale.

Excess weight can contribute to hip pain, as the hip is a weight-bearing joint. The more weight you have to support while walking and moving, the more strain your hips feel. (Losing just one pound of weight can feel like removing six pounds of pressure from your hips!)

Getting rid of excess body weight can lessen the strain on your hips and improve your general health. Every little bit helps!

To kickstart your weight loss, try our Walking Workouts For Weight Loss.

7. Remember to Rest

Overhead view of a middle-age woman sleeping on bright blue sheets.

Of course, one of the best ways to treat hip pain at home is to rest and prioritize nighttime sleep. Identify whatever activity is causing the hip pain or making it worse, and take a break!

While your body does need movement and exercise to heal and build strength, initial rest can be important after an injury. For example, a mild, strained hip flexor could require one to three weeks of rest and treatment to recover, while a more severe case may take months.

When to Talk to Your Doctor About Hip Pain

Older woman sitting in a chair with hip pain.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

It’s always great to try to relieve pain at home, but in some cases, a call to your doctor might be warranted.

We recommend seeking out medical attention if you experience any of the following symptoms:

Pain is sudden and severe
Cannot put weight on your hips
Popping noise from an injured hip
Can’t move your hip without pain
Any deformation or bleeding

When we don’t take care of the largest joint in our body, we start to feel the pain. Incorporating these best at-home hip pain treatments will help relieve existing pain and prevent future injuries!

Category: Fitness, Health, Wellness