Arthritis of the lower back and hips refers to the inflammation and degeneration of the joints in these areas. The most common forms of arthritis that affect the lower back and hips are osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
Osteoarthritis: This is the most common form of arthritis. It occurs when the cartilage that cushions the joints gradually wears away, leading to bone-on-bone contact. Osteoarthritis in the lower back and hips can cause pain, stiffness, and reduced range of motion. It is often associated with aging, previous injuries, or repetitive stress on the joints.
Rheumatoid arthritis: This is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the lining of the joints, resulting in inflammation. Rheumatoid arthritis can affect multiple joints, including those in the lower back and hips. Symptoms may include pain, stiffness, swelling, fatigue, and joint deformities.
Arthritis in the lower back and hips can cause chronic pain, difficulty with movement, and reduced quality of life. It can be exacerbated by factors such as obesity, sedentary lifestyle, or improper posture. Treatment focuses on managing pain, reducing inflammation, and improving joint function to enhance mobility and overall well-being.
The diagnosis of arthritis of the lower back and hips typically involves a combination of medical history assessment, physical examination, imaging studies, and sometimes laboratory tests.
Based on the findings from these evaluations, your healthcare professional can determine if you have arthritis in the lower back and hips and, if so, which type of arthritis. This will help guide the appropriate treatment plan for managing your symptoms and improving your joint health.
What Are Treatment Options for Arthritis of Lower Back and Hips?
The treatment options for arthritis of the lower back and hips aim to alleviate pain, reduce inflammation, improve joint function, and enhance overall quality of life. The specific treatment approach will depend on factors such as the type and severity of arthritis, individual needs, and preferences. Here are some common treatment options:
Medications:
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs): Over the counter NSAIDs like ibuprofen or naproxen sodium can help reduce pain and inflammation.
Analgesics: Pain relievers such as acetaminophen may be used to manage pain.
Topical medications: Creams, gels, or patches containing NSAIDs, or capsaicin can provide localized pain relief.
Corticosteroids: In some cases, corticosteroid injections into the affected joints may be recommended for short-term pain relief and reduced inflammation.
Physical therapy:
A physical therapist can develop an exercise program to improve joint flexibility, strengthen supporting muscles, and enhance overall function.
Manual therapy techniques, such as joint mobilization or manipulation, may be used to reduce pain and improve joint mobility.
Heat or cold therapy, ultrasound, or electrical stimulation may be incorporated to relieve pain and inflammation.
Assistive devices:
Using assistive devices like canes, crutches, or walkers can help reduce stress on the joints and improve mobility.
Orthotic devices, such as shoe inserts or supportive braces, can provide stability and alleviate joint pressure.
Lifestyle modifications:
Maintaining a healthy weight can reduce stress on the joints.
Regular exercise, such as low-impact activities like swimming or cycling, can improve joint flexibility and strength.
Good posture and body mechanics can help minimize strain on the lower back and hips.
Heat and cold therapy:
Applying heat or cold packs to the affected areas can help alleviate pain and reduce inflammation.
Complementary therapies:
Techniques like acupuncture, yoga, tai chi, or massage therapy may provide pain relief and improve joint function for some individuals.
Surgical interventions:
In severe cases of arthritis that don’t respond to conservative treatments, surgical options like joint replacement or joint fusion may be considered. These are typically considered when conservative measures have been exhausted and arthritis significantly impacts daily life.
It’s important to consult with a healthcare professional, such as a rheumatologist or orthopedic specialist, to discuss your symptoms, receive an accurate diagnosis, and develop a personalized treatment plan that suits your specific needs. Some patients are exploring non traditional options such as regenerative medicine.
Regenerative Medicine for Arthritis of Lower Back and Hips
Regenerative Medicine, also known as stem cell therapy, utilizes the properties of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). These cells have gained attention as a potential treatment for arthritis, including arthritis of the lower back and hips. MSCs are a type of stem cell that can differentiate into various cell types, including bone, cartilage, and fat cells. They also possess anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory properties, which are beneficial for managing arthritis.
While research on the use of MSCs for arthritis is still ongoing and evolving, several studies have explored their potential benefits. Here are some important points to consider:
Mechanism of action: MSCs have the ability to differentiate into chondrocytes (cartilage cells) and promote the production of cartilage tissue. They can also modulate the immune response and reduce inflammation in the joints.
Administration: MSCs can be administered in various ways, such as through injections directly into the affected joints or through intravenous infusion. The specific method of administration may vary depending on the study protocol and the expertise of the healthcare provider.
Research findings: Preliminary research and clinical trials have shown promising results regarding the use of MSCs for arthritis. Some studies have reported improvements in pain, joint function, and quality of life in patients with arthritis, including those with lower back and hip involvement. However, it’s important to note that more extensive research is needed to establish the long-term safety and efficacy of MSC therapy for arthritis.
If you are considering MSC therapy for arthritis, it’s important to research and determine if this is a good option for you. Finding a quality provider can help you make an informed decision about the potential risks and benefits. To learn more about treatment options for arthritis in lower back and hips call us today at Stemedix!
Among athletic adults, chronic hip pain is common, affecting 30-40% of adults who play sports. In addition, adults over 60 are 12-15% likely to experience chronic hip pain, regardless of their activities. In the past, patients with chronic or acute hip injury pain typically had limited treatment options. The hips are the largest weight-bearing joints, making them more prone to overuse injuries and causing the hips to be especially difficult to heal. As a result, most hip injuries are treated with rest and physical therapy. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections can potentially offer an alternative. Keep reading to learn more about PRP Injections for hip injuries.
What Causes Hip Pain?
Hip pain and injuries can affect patients of all ages. However, it’s most common among older adults. While some patients may experience damage in their hips due to a childhood illness or a structural abnormality, most injuries occur from overuse or trauma.
Hip injuries that patients often experience include:
Labral tears (damaging the cartilage)
Strains or sprains
Dislocated hip
Fracture
When a hip becomes injured, patients are more likely to experience other conditions that cause chronic pain in the hips, such as arthritis or bursitis.
What Is Platelet-Rich Plasma?
Four components comprise whole blood: the red and white blood cells, platelets, and plasma. Each serves an essential function as blood moves through the body.
Platelets are part of the body’s healing response, clotting the blood, so your injury stops bleeding and releasing growth factors and anti-inflammatory mediators to help facilitate healing.
PRP starts with a sample of the patient’s blood, which then spins in a centrifuge. The centrifuge separates the platelets and plasma from the white and red blood cells. As a result, PRP contains a highly concentrated number of platelets in the plasma.
Once separated, a physician injects PRP into the patient’s injury site to stimulate and expedite healing.
How Can PRP Treat Hip Injuries?
Several studies examine the benefits of PRP in treating hip injuries and pain, specifically hip bursitis, osteoarthritis, and labral tears.
Hip bursitis is particularly difficult to treat, yet studies show the condition is unlikely to resolve without medical intervention. However, recent reviews of using PRP injections to treat hip bursitis show patients experienced significant improvement after their injections. In addition, long-term data showed that patients still benefited from the injections two years later.
In patients with labral tears in their hip, a study examining the effectiveness of PRP injections to treat hip pain found patients experienced significant symptom relief, pain reduction, and improved function after their injections.PRP injections for hip arthritis also show positive results, with patients undergoing the treatment experiencing remarkable improvements in their function and pain within two weeks. With PRP injections, patients suffering from hip pain may have a new avenue to explore when searching for relief. To learn more about PRP Injections for hip injuries, contact a professional at Stemedix today!
The hip joint is one of the largest in the human body. It can bear up to five times a person’s body weight and allows us to stand, walk, run and enjoy an active life. Changes in the hip’s function can be life-changing, making it difficult to perform normal activities. Osteoarthritis in the hip can be extremely painful and threaten a person’s mobility. The inflammation caused by osteoarthritis in the hip joint can cause pain to spread to the low back, pelvic area, and legs. Not only does it make standing and walking uncomfortable, but hip pain can also make it uncomfortable to sit for more than a few minutes at a time. Here we will talk about Stem Cell Therapy for hips.
How Does Stem Cell Therapy Help Hip Arthritis Pain?
Surgery is often considered to be the best solution for hip pain, but it comes with many downsides. The risks involved with a surgical procedure, including long recovery times, can leave some patients looking for a different solution.
Stem cell therapy offers a solution that has the potential to provide pain and symptom management with fewer and more minor risks. Downtime and recovery are minimal.
Stem cells are considered to be the body’s raw materials. They are the cells from which everything in the human body is made—including other cells. Stem cell therapy is the practice of introducing stem cells into areas of injury for possible tissue regeneration and pain management focus for many conditions.
Stem cell therapy can often also be used in conjunction with platelet-rich plasma (PRP) to treat osteoarthritis.
Stem cell therapy may be helpful if the following apply to you:
Regular physical activities are painful
You have trouble walking or standing for an extended time
Managing stairs has become difficult
Your sleep is disturbed due to hip pain
It is hard to get up from a chair
Stem cell therapy offers a potential therapy to decrease or eliminate the cause of osteoarthritis in the hip so that you can return to daily activities without pain.
How Does Stem Cell Therapy Work?
Osteoarthritis is most commonly caused by wear and tear of the body’s joints. All bones have cartilage at their ends to provide a protective cushion as the bones move to perform everyday functions. With time and use, the cartilage can wear away, leaving joints unprotected. The pressure caused by bone-on-bone interaction causes inflammation that can lead to osteoarthritis pain.
Stem cell therapy has the ability to encourage new cartilage to grow. The renewal of healthy levels of cushioning makes it possible to move the hip joints without pain.
Is Stem Cell Therapy Right for You?
If you’re suffering from pain related to hip osteoarthritis and have tried other therapies without success, stem cell therapy for hips may help. Patients can explore this option to see if they are a candidate with no obligation. Contact a Care Coordinator today to learn more.
Hips are some of the strongest and largest joints in the body. They support the body’s weight and provide a wide range of motion. Despite their power, hips are susceptible to disease, trauma, and gradual degradation. Over time, hip joints can succumb to many different pathologies. For example, osteoarthritis is one of the leading causes of pain in the hip. This can result from chronic overuse. Hip pain can result in many serious consequences. For instance, hip pain can limit a patient’s mobility and affect their ability to sleep. Pinched nerves, certain types of cancers, and infections can all lead to hip discomfort. Here we answer the question, How long does stem cell therapy last for hips?
Treatments for Hip Pain
There are many traditional medical treatments for hip joint discomfort. They include:
Pain medication
Rest
Arthroscopic surgeries
Physical Therapy
And more
In severe cases, hip replacement surgery may be necessary. Hip surgeries can be very difficult for patients. In many cases, they may result in significant pain and long recovery periods. Thankfully, there are options beyond traditional treatments for hip pain.
Research over the past several decades has indicated that regenerative medicine, also known as stem cell therapy, may be useful for treating hip pain.
Understanding Stem Cell Treatments
Stem cells are one type of simple cell that the human body produces. They can stimulate the growth of new tissue in many areas and systems in the body. Beyond that, stem cells encourage the body’s natural healing processes. These simple cells can be used to differentiate and potentially regenerate tissues.
In some cases, healing can be difficult when not enough stem cells are produced in a certain area. This sometimes contributes to hip pain and discomfort. The introduction of stem cells into a problem area can help motivate the growth and renewal of tissue in the hip joint. Stem cell therapies also have the potential to reduce painful inflammation in the hips and other joints.
Stem cell treatments are minimally invasive and have been shown to be safe. Some patients have used stem cell therapies to prevent the need for painful surgeries.
Benefits of Stem Cell Therapy for Hips
Stem cell therapy for hips, also known as regenerative medicine for hip joints or hip joint stem cell treatment, involves the use of mesenchymal stem cells to repair and regenerate damaged hip joint tissue. This type of therapy is especially beneficial for those with hip osteoarthritis, a condition where the cartilage in the hip joint wears down, causing pain and stiffness. Mesenchymal stem cell therapy for hip osteoarthritis has been shown to improve pain, increase joint function, and promote tissue repair and regeneration. Stem cell hip regeneration and hip joint tissue repair using stem cells are promising treatments that offer an alternative to surgical interventions and can significantly improve the quality of life for those suffering from hip joint problems.
How Long Do Stem Cell Treatments Last?
So, how long does Stem Cell Therapy last for hips? In most cases, patients treated with stem cell therapies can return to their normal activities within six weeks.
The length of improvement in the patient’s hip pain may vary, depending on their condition. However, many patients have experienced years of hip pain relief from stem cell therapies.
Also, the minimally-invasive nature of stem cell therapies allows patients to receive further treatments, if necessary. This innovative approach to hip pain relief provides an exciting opportunity for patients everywhere. If you are interested in booking a consultation with a care coordinator contact us today at Stemedix!
Osteoarthritis of the hip is a painful condition that can interfere with leg movement and diminish the quality of life. In some, the symptoms are mild, but in others, osteoarthritis can be severe and can even lead to joint failure. Pain is often intermittent in early stages, but in later stages, the pain can be constant with periods of sharp, intense pain. The hip joint becomes stiff and unstable, making it difficult to move around and greatly increasing the risk of falls.
Unfortunately, there are few effective treatments for osteoarthritis of the hip. Management includes pain control with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and physical therapy. Steroid injections into the hip are not as effective as they are for knee osteoarthritis, so many doctors hesitate to perform them. Joint supplements such as glucosamine and chondroitin are unlikely to be very effective—clinical trials have not provided evidence that they actually work. The definitive treatment for hip osteoarthritis is hip replacement surgery, which is expensive and associated with a long period of recovery.
The main problem in osteoarthritis is that the joint breaks down over time from wear and tear (i.e. microtraumas). At the same time, the joint has a very limited capacity to heal itself. In other words, once the joint breaks down, it pretty much stays that way. Since life is a series of joint microtraumas, the hip gets progressively worse. Indeed, one in four people will have painful osteoarthritis of the hip by age 85, and hundreds of thousands will have it earlier in life.
Scientists have long wanted to find ways to help the body regenerate the joint substances, particularly joint cartilage. Unfortunately, the joint does not receive good blood supply and no known drug or supplement can actually rebuild joint cartilage. That is the main reason researchers are aggressively testing stem cells as a treatment for hip osteoarthritis.
Mesenchymal stem cells have the potential to become many different types of cells, including chondrocytes (cartilage cells). Mesenchymal stem cells sense the environment they are in and then become the cell consistent with that environment. So, the theory goes, injecting mesenchymal stem cells into the hip joint can prompt them to become hip joint cells (chondrocytes).
Researchers tested this hypothesis in a clinical study. They injected mesenchymal stem cells taken from fat tissue (i.e. adipose) and injected them into the hip joints of people with difficult-to-treat hip osteoarthritis. They compared the patients’ Harris Hip scores (HHS) before and 6 months after treatment. HHS is a reliable way to assess the severity of osteoarthritis symptoms. An HHS score of less than 70 is “poor” and a score of 80 to 90 is “good.” Before stem cell treatment, patients had an average HHS score of 67.2±3.4 and 84.6±6.3 afterward. Scores also improved in other tests including WOMAC and Visual Analogue Scale. In other words, mesenchymal stem cell treatment reduced pain and improved joint function in these patients compared to levels prior to treatment.
The authors of the clinical study state that “preliminary results are positive and promising.” Further research and studies will help to learn more about this regenerative medicine potential.
Reference: Dall’Oca, C. et al. (2019). Mesenchymal Stem Cells injection in hip osteoarthritis: preliminary results. ACTA Biomedica. 2019, 90(Suppl 1): 75-80.
This website and its contents are not intended to treat, cure, diagnose, or prevent any disease. Stemedix, Inc. shall not be held liable for the medical claims made by patient testimonials or videos. They are not to be viewed as a guarantee for each individual. The efficacy for some products presented have not been confirmed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
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