How Do My Hip Flexors Impact Back Pain?

When you think about back pain, it’s common to think about problems with your discs, an imbalance in your muscles, facet joint issues, or a nerve impingement. However, there’s another common cause of back pain that you may not have heard about, and that’s your hip flexor muscles.

Your hip flexors are actually a group of muscles consisting of the psoas major, psoas minor and the iliacus. These muscles essentially run from the back of your body, just in front of your spine and pelvis, and run through to attach to the inside of your upper leg. These muscles are called hip flexors because that’s exactly what they do: they bring your leg upward from the hip, and when lengthened they allow your leg to move behind your body. Your hip flexors are also stabilizers, because they play a role in the balancing act your body performs when you walk, run or stand.

So, here’s the problem with hip flexors—they can get really tight. When this happens, it can become hard to move your leg behind your body when you walk or run, which means that other parts of your body have to work harder and in weird ways to counteract that poor range of motion.

Also, when your hip flexor muscles get tight, it can cause your pelvis to tilt forward. This translates into and overarching of your lower back which can stress the muscles and ligaments in the area and cause pain, tightness and a loss of range of motion. Furthermore, tight hip flexors can impinge on your sciatic nerve, which is a large nerve that travels from your lower back down each of your legs. This kind of impingement can be a source of sciatica, which causes deep and achy pain, as well as numbness and tingling anywhere from your lower back to your foot.

Some of the most common causes of tight hip flexor muscles include:

• I know, it’s surprising, but sitting for long stretches of time day after day doesn’t allow those muscles to open up and stretch.
• Sleeping in a flexed position, i.e. in the fetal position, for the same reason as above.
• Lack of flexibility.
• Poor posture, which can cause those muscles to work harder
• Weak core muscles, which also cause your hip flexors to work harder
• Overstretching the muscles, for example in running, especially sprinting, cross-country skiing and biking.
• Structural issues, such as flat feet, misaligned knees, a tipped pelvis, an over-strengthened lower body and a difference in leg length. While these conditions can affect your hip flexor muscles, over time, chronic dysfunction of those muscles can ultimately cause knee pain and pain in your feet and ankles.

What can you do about tight hip flexors? One of the first orders of business if those muscles are tight is to stretch them. A simple stretch is to kneel on one knee with the other leg in front, tuck your hips under and tighten your butt muscles. Hold for 15-30 seconds, and do the stretch on both sides. You should feel the stretch in the top of the leg you’re kneeling on. Sometimes you will feel the stretch in your quad first and not in your hip, this is a good start. It’s important not to overstretch, or stretch too aggressively because your hip flexors will respond by either tightening more or developing small tears that cause pain. So, if you need a bit more stretch, gently and slightly lean your upper body back, or tilt your pelvis.

You may be wondering if acupuncture can help you with tight hip flexors and back pain related to tightening of these muscles, and the answer is yes. I can also help you with the first step, which is to loosen up these muscles through stretching, Tui Na and heat therapy. In addition to loosening the muscles, acupuncture offers a number of benefits to relieve pain and speed healing and improve function:

• It can help loosen tight or spastic muscles, as well as release painful trigger points.
• It is well-documented by a number of research studies that acupuncture is an effective treatment for lower back pain.
• One of the ways that acupuncture relieves pain is by increasing the circulation of pain-relieving neurotransmitters and ramping up your body’s own opioid-like pain relief system.
• Acupuncture increases circulation to the areas being treated. This is helpful in bringing blood and healing nutrients to the area, especially in areas of muscle tightness in which circulation may have been hampered.
• Researchers have also documented that acupuncture reduces inflammation, including inflammation that’s associated with sciatica.

A lot of people have pain and dysfunction associated with their hip flexor muscles, but a great majority of them are unaware that these muscles are the source of their pain—or even that these muscles exist! Seeking out acupuncture can be an effective strategy not only in assessing the problem, but also in obtaining relief. If you’d like to know more, or think you may have issues with your hip flexors, contact me today.

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