Week 43/2024: Off to the hip physio
Week of 21 October 2024
This was Hobart Show week, so we got a day off on Thursday. Thanks, show that I never go to.
A trip to the hip physio
But first, a recap of my myriad injuries
My old lady shoulder, which I was writing about at length before my back injury and subsequent nerve damage and ongoing foot issues, is starting to settle down and feel normal again.
As is my foot, though I still haven’t tested it out on a walk longer than 8 km.
Baby steps.
A new injury
But while that’s all been recovering nicely, a few weeks ago I started having trouble doing some of my daily exercises. The first one was the ‘sit and rise’ test, which I’d been doing most days since I did the Built to Move 10-day challenge.
Doing the exercise was hurting, deep in my right hip joint, where it never had before. And I noticed a couple of other places where my hip wasn’t feeling right, so I mentioned it to the exercise physiologist in September. After moving my leg around a bit, he ruled out arthritis and thought it might be a bursitis—to go with the one in my shoulder, of course.
Ever the optimist, I sat with it for a few more weeks before deciding it didn’t seem to be getting any better, and went to my GP to see what her thoughts were.
She did similar mobility tests to what I’d done with the exercise physiologist, and said something about me having a lot of mobility in my lower body, which apparently isn’t necessarily a great thing. And she agreed that it wasn’t arthritis, suggesting a trip to the physiotherapist who specialises in hips would be the best thing rather than her ordering a bunch of investigations.
“He’ll probably give you some more exercises,” she said, in a manner that suggested there was no way I wasn’t going to get more exercises.
So off to the hip physio I went.
He asked a lot of questions about what was hurting and, based on that, said he thought he knew what was going on. Then he did the mobility tests to see exactly what hurt, and asked where I was in the perimenopause/menopause stage.
Great question, right? I don’t recall any other health situation where a practitioner ever asked me that. I’ve had to volunteer it on many occasions, and this time I didn’t even consider it was relevant.
How wrong could I be.
I mean, if you were asked about the common menopause symptoms caused by fluctuating and reducing hormones, you’d probably come up with a list that included hot flushes, mood swings, hyper-irritability, brain fog and forgetfulness, dry and inelastic skin due to loss of collagen, weight gain, bone density loss, and sleeplessness. Give or take a few.
You probably wouldn’t link the loss of collagen in your skin caused by low oestrogen to reduced strength and flexibility of your tendons, thusly making them more injury prone.
Because tendons have collagen too.
Hello, gluteal tendinopathy.
What?
“We can fix this,” says the hip physio.
How do we fix this?
We have to build up the strength in the muscles that these tendons are attached to. (If you cared to know, these muscles are the gluteus minimus and gluteus medius, and their tendons attach to the top of the thigh bone near the hip joint, resulting in what I’ve been describing as “groin pain”.)
And voila, here are your new exercises.
Ouch!
They are HARD.
After checking I could actually do them, he sent me home with my new hard exercises (I can feel said glute muscles screaming when I do them) and instructions to not cross my legs in any way, not even at the ankles, not cross legged floor sitting and, in fact, don’t do anything where your leg crosses the centre line of your body.
I’ve discovered this is easier said than done.
Interestingly, the hip physio also explained that what I’ve taken to be muscular tightness is actually weakness. What I didn’t realise is my left side is stronger than my right side, and this is because my left side supports me, while my right side does stuff. The result is that I have to build up strength in my right side. (And by the way, he said, you should do the same exercises on your left side to maintain their strength.)
I think my strength training program has come at just the right time.
Week 43 summary
Habit tracker
These will have to change to incorporate the new exercises. But for this week,
- 5 minutes exercise sequence in the morning (7 days): 7/7 days
- Hip extensions (7 days): 7/7 days
- Go outside before 8 am (7 days): 7/7 days
- 2 walks or bike rides or a combination (6 days): 6/6 days
- Long walk (1 day): 1/1 day
- Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 7/7 days
- Evening exercise sequence (7 days): 7/7 days
- 9.00 shutdown (6 days): 5/6 days
What was the best thing about this week?
Obviously the public holiday was a great thing.
What did I notice this week?
This sign in a suburban front yard.
What did I learn this week?
Apart from learning the anatomy of the gluteus medius, here are some of the other fun facts I came across this week.
Fact 1
In order to remove impurities from processed sugar and to make it white, the manufacturer uses a carbon product. In some places but not, apparently, Australia, they use bone char to do this. Which means that technically white sugar may contain animal products. Thanks to Kramstable for this one.
Fact 2
Dog urine can kill daphne plants (see above). I googled. It’s true. Apparently.
Fact 3
‘Memoriam’ is a Latin word that means memory. It isn’t used as a stand alone word in English, only with the preposition ‘in’ to create the prepositional phrase In Memoriam, which means ‘in memory of’.
Fact 4
There is a creature called a comb jelly, which is not a jellyfish, it is a ctenophore. It is the earliest creature still living today to branch from the common ancestor of all animals.
That is a cool fact by itself. But wait. There’s more!
Two of them can can fuse their bodies together, merging their digestive and nervous systems, without any issues with immune rejection. Basically, their bodies don’t recognise themselves as individual selves. They are like actual Borg!
Amazing!
What am I reading?
- Food for Menopause by Linia Patel
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