Is it Joint Pain or is it Menopause?

If you are a woman in your 40s and maybe early 50s, and you've been experiencing joint pain, maybe in your hip, I have got a story for you. If you are anything like me, you have been feeling this hip pain and thinking you are "really getting old" now. Or maybe you start quoting lines from when old movings and saying that youth is wasted on the young.

If you are like me, you are super frustrated. You've already been to the doctor. They said it's probably arthritis. then maybe you had an X-ray and they said, "Mm, not really. I think you're fine. You're okay." So you start to feel like it's all in your head and maybe you've stopped doing activities that you typically have done and you just, this pain is not getting any better. It's very common in the perimenopausal group of women, and it's not because we have arthritis, and I mean, maybe we do, but that's not necessarily the cause of it. It's oftentimes a tendinopathy or breakdown of tendons and muscle strength that's related to the loss of estrogens.

Does your story sound like mine?

For me, this has become my story, my tale to tell. I was not this past December, but the year before. I was in the process of training for a marathon. And I was pushing hard. One day I was tired. I was almost done with my run. I had a couple easy miles left and I didn't want to do it, but I just kept pushing. Well, I feel like my foot just kind of went splat and like that was that. Um So I stopped running for a bit. I waiting a bit and then I saw a doctor. He told me that I sprained your foot. There's no stress fracture.

But this foot was just taking forever to get better. So I wound up having an MRI. Nothing other than actually some arthritis in my big toe, but that wasn't where I was having pain. So through time, I had Physical Therapy and used Shockwave Therapy (one of the perks of this job). I did some exercises. The foot started to gradually feel better and fast forward to the following December.

I had deferred this marathon, so I was training again and actually I didn't even make it to December because I started having terrible hip pain. And I thought, "What is happening? Like here we go again." And turns out I had a self-diagnosed gluteal tendonopathy. So what is that? It's very, very common for women in this age group where there starts to be some breakdown of the tendons in the outer hip area or maybe the front of the hip, but it can feel like a very deep pain.

What now?

Because of my profession, I was able to kind of feel around in the hip and I said this is definitely muscular. I can feel it right at the attachment to the bones. I know what this is. It's kind of the same predicament I was in last year just in different body park. So again, shockwave therapy. I had to stop running, which was disappointing, but at this point where I am in my life, I didn't get frustrated.

 I said, "You know what? I need to pivot right now.

I need to do something different because the same thing I've always done isn't working for me anymore." So I put more attention into strength training. I've been doing a lot of walking. I've been walking with my weighted vest, walking on a treadmill on an incline, and my hip is slowly getting better. I am able to add in some walk jog sessions now.

But I just wanted to tell you, this is very common and it's not talked about. So it is hormone related. It can be managed with hormone replacement therapy. Obviously this is something you would have to discuss with your doctor to see if it's right for you. There are also lots of non-hormonal treatments that are used you know supplements that can help to boost your natural estrogen production or can can mimic the effects of estrogen in the body. So these are things that you should be talking to your doctor who hopefully knows a lot about menopause to help you get through these things.

And if your doctor is just kind of brushing you aside or saying, "Oh, it's just arthritis, oh, you're just aging," then you need to find someone who is specialized and can really help you to work through and be able to continue to do the things that you wanna do, even if you have to pivot a little bit.

We have a list of providers we refer to, or you can check out the Menopause Society and they will also have a list of providers that are certified to treatment your Menopause symptoms. Additionally, Cape Concierge Physical Therapy has Menopause Coaches that are trained to help you Thrive, not just Survive.