If the hip joint or other joints clicks and pain is felt, this indicates the presence of a disease in them. Timely diagnosis and proper treatment will eliminate extraneous sounds and other accompanying symptoms.
Why does my hip joint click?
Many of us have experienced a situation where the hip joint clicks and the so-called jammed feeling sets in. It usually occurs while standing up, walking, and rotating the leg. The clicking sound is produced by the friction of a part of a muscle or tendon against a protruding part of the femur.
This phenomenon is called snapping hip syndrome. The clicks are often harmless, painless, and cause no discomfort, except that their frequent occurrence can be annoying. The syndrome most commonly affects people whose legs are subjected to regular flexion, such as athletes and dancers.
List of reasons
- In the hip joint, the friction of the muscles and tendons against the bone structure occurs in the outer areas, where the greater trochanter of the femur passes over theiliac-tibial tract. In the position of the straightened hip, the tract is located behind the greater trochanter. When the hip joint flexes, the tendons move forward relative to the greater trochanter. The components of the tract resemble a dense rubber band that can stretch. The tendons rub against the slightly protruding greater trochanter, and a click of the hip joint can be heard. Sometimes this leads to bursitis. With bursitis, the synovial sac becomes inflamed and thickens, the standard sliding of muscles against the bone is disturbed.
- The tendons of the rectus femoris pass along its front surface and join the pelvic bone. When the hip flexes, the tendon moves against its head. When the leg is straightened, the tendon falls into place. Clicks the joint in the hip due to such reciprocating tendon movements over the head of the femur.
- Clicks occur as a result of tearing of the articular cartilage or if broken cartilage particles have formed in the joint cavity. In such a situation, a click may be accompanied by pain and dysfunction of the motor apparatus. If parts of the articular cartilage are torn off, then the hip joint is blocked.
- Arthrosis, arthritis, ankylosis leads to unpleasant sounds in the hip joint.
- Damaged tendons, cartilage, their dystrophy.
- Increased joint flexibility from birth.
Hip click treatment
If the joint clicks, but there is no pain, then nothing needs to be treated. But for those who are very confused by clicking sounds, there are specific ways to eliminate them.at home:
- monitor the level of physical activity - minimize, it is better to refuse altogether;
- apply an ice pack to the hip joint;
- use non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to reduce discomfort;
- prevent repetitive hip movements during sports, physical exercise, such as reducing the number of squats, bike rides, swimming only with the help of hands.
If, after these events, the joint still clicks, discomfort and pain are bothering you, then you need to seek professional medical help. Treatment is as follows:
- Visits are scheduled to the physiotherapy room, where, with the help of special exercises, they stretch the thigh muscles, which reduce discomfort.
- If hip bursitis develops, the doctor may prescribe anti-inflammatory hormone injections (corticosteroids).
- Surgical intervention. The operation is prescribed if other methods have not brought results. To know which operation to perform, you need to identify the cause of the disease. Arthroscopy of the hip joint will help in this matter.
Knee joint
In some people, the knee joint clicks while walking, when bending or straightening the leg. This may indicate the presence of a disease in it, especially if the clicks are accompanied by pain. It is important not to start the joint - not to bring to edema, inflammation and seek medical advice in time, because onthere is still something to be done in the early stages.
Causes of a click in the knee
1. Pathological. A chronic disease can occur in the body, the syndrome of which is clicks during movement and pain in the knee joint:
- arthrosis, patellar instability, tendinitis, gout and other joint diseases in which cartilage is destroyed;
- s alt deposition provokes clicks in the knee;
- varicose veins;
- new and old knee injuries;
- various inflammations caused by infection.
X-ray, MRI and blood tests will help to detect the listed diseases.
2. Physiological. It means that the joint in the knee clicks not due to the presence of a serious illness, but due to:
- differences in joint geometry; its surfaces do not perfectly match during contact and a click is heard when walking;
- knee bone protrudes above ligaments; moving, the joint touches the bone and clicks.
Physiological causes of extraneous sounds in the joint do not pose any he alth hazard and do not require medical intervention.
How to treat a knee joint?
When the knee joint clicks and there is pain, inflammation or swelling, the doctor will first deal with the elimination of these symptoms with medication:
- analgesics are prescribed for pain;
- anti-infectives if there is an infection;
- anti-inflammatory drugs are used for edema;
- chondoprotectors will help cure and restore cartilage.
Physiotherapy is a good addition to medicines. The patient is referred for procedures that help eliminate clicks and discomfort in the knees:
- laser procedures prevent cell degeneration and even at the initial stage are able to stop the disease and prevent it from developing;
- UHF therapy - the impact on the knee joint with electric current leads to the normalization of blood circulation and the flow of useful elements to the clicking joint;
- electrophoresis serves as an addition to prescribed medicines, with its help they are better absorbed.
Hand joints
The hand consists of several joints: wrist, elbow and shoulder. Each of them, under certain conditions, can make clicking sounds. As with the hip or knee joints, it is necessary to find out the cause of the crunch. For example, the wrist joint clicks with such diseases:
- arthritis;
- arthrosis;
- tendinitis;
- osteoarthritis;
- de Quervain's disease;
- injury to the hands.
Any of these ailments is accompanied by pain in the hand, discomfort, sometimes inflammation, swelling. The full functioning of the wrist is limited. Treatment is carried out with medicines, physiotherapy, exercise therapy, massages.
The joints of the hands and in the elbow area click. A common cause is arthrosis, which resolves against the background of an injury or inflammation. Decreases during illnessthe amount of synovial fluid in the elbow joint, the cartilage becomes thinner, then torn.
Shoulder
The shoulder joint clicks as a result of arbitrary dislocation or subluxation. According to studies, they are due to slippage of the biceps or deltoid muscle from bony protrusions and changes in mucous bags.
The shoulder joint may make clicking or crackling sounds. For example, a click will be heard when, under the influence of increasing load or mobility, the pressure inside the synovial fluid increases and air bubbles form and burst. This condition is painless and does not harm he alth.
Crackling sounds indicate that the joint is worn out and the mechanism of its work is broken or that the ligaments are sprained and the presence of diseases.
Why else does the shoulder joint click?
- Sedentary lifestyle.
- Improper nutrition and metabolic disorders, the result is the deposition of s alts and crunch.
- Heredity.
- Injuries, increased physical activity, hypermobility.
- Infection, inflammation.
Finger snaps
The joints of the fingers click with such diseases:
- stenosing tendovaginitis;
- Knott's disease;
- stenosing ligamentitis;
- knotty tendinitis;
- springy and snapping finger.
With these diseases, the finger is blocked in a bent or unbentposition with a click. A swelling appears on top of it, the tendon thickens, pain is felt at the base of the affected finger, first with any movement, then at rest.
Baby joints
With the onset of vigorous activity, that is, even in infancy, the child's joints crackle and click. This happens because children are hypermobile, but their cartilage has not yet fully formed, which means that they can make sounds with any movements. Even in adolescents, the articular-ligamentous apparatus is not yet very mature.
It is necessary to worry if the clicks are accompanied by pain and limitation of movement. In this case, you need to contact an orthopedist, take an appropriate blood test, undergo an ISI and X-ray.
It happens that a child's joints click due to the pathology of the connective tissue - it is very weak and the flexibility of the joints is increased. In addition, heart disease is often detected in children with this pathology.
Do not forget about diseases of the musculoskeletal system, such as dysplasia, arthrosis and others. After all, they also provoke clicks in children's joints.
How to help joints?
If joints click all over the body, you can resort to drug-free treatments:
- Physical activity - exercise therapy, daily walks. Perfect for swimming. It is advisable to discuss the volume of the load and the variety of exercises with the doctor, because some of them may be contraindicated.
- Therapeutic massage. For chronic diseasesjoints, rubbing, light stroking, kneading is acceptable. If there is acute inflammation, massage is contraindicated.
- Proper nutrition. Excess weight often leads to gout, arthrosis of the hip and knee joints. The food should get the optimal amount of protein.
- Maintaining water balance so that synovial fluid does not decrease in diseased cartilage;
- In infants, the development of the hip joint and the correct setting of the feet while walking are monitored.
When the joints click, the doctor will tell you what to do. Depending on the diagnosis made by him, treatment is prescribed. It can be conservative, i.e. treatment with medicines or surgery - an operation is prescribed.
The effectiveness of folk remedies in the treatment of joints has not been confirmed. Most likely, the patient feels improvement as a result of self-hypnosis. But if there are no contraindications, you can treat the joints with folk methods.
