Your Hips and Chiropractic – A Natural Alignment
You need them for a good golf swing, dancing, a healthy pregnancy and to support your spine (and head). They anchor your legs so you can walk and you sit on them too. They’re your hips!
Your hips are really two large bones (each made up of three fused bones) that are attached to your sacrum – the base of your spine. They are strapped to your sacrum with lots of ligaments. Around your hips are lots of tendons that attach to many muscles.
If your spine is out of alignment (it’s subluxated), your hips may “do the twist” causing one leg to appear shorter than the other.
One leg isn’t really shorter than the other. It just seems that way because your legs attach to your hips. If one hip is a little higher than the other, then one leg appears longer and one appears shorter. This is most obvious when you lie down. That’s why chiropractors sometimes have patients lie down (usually face down) to measure their leg length difference. This is one sign your body structure is off-balance.
Apart from causing problems with your tailor, uneven hips can cause unnatural wear and tear on your spine, arthritis and/or lumbar (lower back) disc bulging, any of which can lead to leg and sciatica pain. If your pubic bones (the front of your hips) are not aligned it may cause sacroiliac pain and pain during pregnancy and childbirth.
Please click here to view the rest of our October 2016 newsletter.
For Your Health,
Dr. Scott Van Dam