How To Relieve Buttock Muscle Pain

Pain in the butt can be a ‘right pain in the butt’! There are a whole host of reasons for this kind of pain, each of which may require a slightly different approach to help it get better.

The first thing worth noting is that even if you have tried the standard route of NHS, Doctors, scans (with nothing major found) and a whole host of toxic medications to no avail, there are plenty of alternatives that may give you the answer to your pain.

One of the biggest errors I see in orthodox medicine is that they simply offer you chemicals and/or a whole variety of image taking devices such as X-rays, MRI scans and even CT scans.

Yet if they cannot see a chemical imbalance in your blood tests or a glaring problem in the pictures they take, you may be told there is nothing that can be done and you will have to live with it and the medication for the rest of your life.

I liken this approach to having a problem with your car – let’s say it just isn’t driving right. If you took it to the mechanic and they simply took a photograph of your car, showed you the picture and said, “Well, all the parts are there, in the right place, so I’ve no idea what’s wrong.” You might feel they hadn’t really done their job.

That is why a mechanic would switch your car on and look at HOW it is working. We osteopaths do the same, we look at your body, we look for how it moves and put our hands on your body to feel the joints and muscles and quality of movement. 

We listen to your body’s tissues and when we have done this thousands of times we begin to pick up what feels right and what does not. 

We also learn how to fix these dysfunctions – your structure may be perfectly sound but the rhythm of your body may be off, it is this that can often cause pain and is often missed by orthodox medicine.

The buttock region, where the powerful gluteal (glutes) muscles reside, is effectively the foundation of your body. Your torso sits atop your pelvis and your legs hang off it. 

This means an enormous amount of forces pass through the region going up and down your body. The miracle is that most people most of the time do this without pain since in essence we humans are quadrupeds and really haven’t evolved effectively yet to be stood on our hind legs.

Common Causes Of Buttock Pain

Whilst this area of our body is a powerhouse for our movement it is a quirk that most of the problems I see in this area are caused by lack of movement. 

We really are not designed for prolonged sitting and yet we have created a world where most of us sit for far too long every day. This begins to cause chronic postural strain which, over time, can lead to pain and discomfort in this area.

The incidence of someone injuring their buttocks whilst doing something physical such as lifting is actually quite rare.

Of course, there are things like sporting injuries, muscle pulls and impact traumas from a fall that can contribute to this problem.

Sometimes the pain in the buttock region can be caused by a back injury or even compensation for a foot or knee problem so when looking to fix the problem one has to look at the whole picture rather than just the area that is in pain. 

It can also be caused by a hip joint problem such as osteoarthritis, tears to the cartilage around the joint, cysts or a variety of other conditions. A good clue that your hip may be involved is that you may be experiencing pain in your groin or down the front of your thigh.

The sacro-iliac joint may also cause this type of pain though it may also come with other clues such as pain through the pelvis into the groin, tingling or pins and needles close to the reproductive organs and even pain into the outside of our ankle.

If you have no idea what has brought on your buttock pain this is normally because it will be a subtle strain that occurs and builds up over a prolonged period of time. For example, we sit at our desk and the screen is slightly off to one side, so we are sat very slightly twisted every day.

This imbalance does not cause acute pain but over days, weeks, months and even years it can build into a problem that shows itself out of the blue. We osteopaths talk about your body’s ability to cope with such small strains as the ‘reservoir of compensation.

Your body will use all manner of tricks to compensate for imbalances and providing your body can compensate you get no pain. But every day that the imbalance exists a little bit of our coping mechanism drips away.

Months down the line our body stops coping and on the day it stops coping we get pain, seemingly out of the blue. We haven’t done anything differently, there is no specific trauma but we begin to experience pain. 

This is why it is actually quite rare for me to see a patient who knows exactly why they are in pain. Most people’s pain is caused by just such subtle strains and imbalances that go unnoticed for quite some time.

How To Relieve Buttock Muscle Pain

If it is a muscle tear type injury step one on the road to recovery is that you must NOT stretch the injury. 

This goes for any muscle pull injury. When you tear a muscle the fibres of the muscle are actually torn apart. Your body then contracts the muscles and uses the inflammatory process to remove the damage, immobilise the area and cause pain to prevent further harm than to rebuild the injured fibres.

Therefore, if you begin stretching the torn fibres you will simply be pulling them apart and aggravating the problem when your body is trying to knit everything back together. 

You will note that the inflammatory process helps the repair, therefore, you really should avoid using anti-inflammatories. 

It is a source of frustration to me that TV adverts for anti-inflammatory drugs are allowed to say that they speed up recovery when that is actually completely impossible to do. 

In fact, anti-inflammatory drugs suppress the acute healing process leaving you vulnerable to a chronic, long term problem.

Pain-free movement can help the repair process by encouraging blood flow, this may only be in a small range of movement initially but the movement will also help any scar tissue heal in a more organised and efficient way. 

Even if the movement you can do without pain is a few millimetres to begin with, doing it for ten minutes every hour or two will definitely help recovery.

Supporting the injured area by strengthening your body with pilates or yoga, preferably under the guidance of a tutor can also help. Given that this kind of injury usually has a number of factors contributing to it, strengthening your whole body can be very powerful both to rehabilitate you and to prevent future problems.

Seeing an osteopath may also help recovery and help you understand what the problem is and how to manage it. An osteopath will do their best to establish why you have the problem and knowing this should enable treatment and self-help to correct it.

Hot and cold jets in the shower can help stimulate blood flow to the area for some temporary relief, as can applying a heating compress such as a cold, damp flannel to the area of pain, cover with a dry towel to insulate and leave on until it dries out. 

You may replace this and repeat it regularly. It is particularly good for acute pain and muscle spasm type problems.

If you feel the now dry flannel when you take it off it will be very hot which is an indication of the increase in blood flow to the area of pain. 

Avoid heat as it causes congestion rather than the rapid blood flow stimulated by the above heating compress. Congestion can cause further swelling and discomfort. Similarly, I find ice applied for more than a couple of minutes can be counterproductive.

Arnica, Ruta and Rhus tox are three remedies that are also excellent and you can get these from a good, independent health food store.

I know of many people who also use CBD oil when they have these types of problems. My personal choice with CBD is to take it regularly because it is so good for you, rather like a good quality multivitamin. But it can also be used when you have a problem. 

Taking an anti-inflammatory drug just once can raise your chance of having a heart attack in the month you have taken it whilst CBD comes with none of that risk, for me, CBD is a simple, safe, logical choice.

How To Prevent Future Buttock Muscle Pain And Injuries

We must start with the understanding that our body is a moving machine, yet we have created a world where we spend far too long stationary which can be the foundation for all manner of injuries. Therefore, rule number one is to move your body regularly.

As I mentioned above, pilates and yoga will aid flexibility and strength and osteopathic treatment can be used as a preventative by helping maintain normal movement in your body.

Learning good lifting techniques is also sensible. This does not take long to learn but can save you a lot of pain and trouble in the long run.

Changing your diet can also be important for healing and pain. Eating foods that do not cause chronic inflammation is vital to your health as a whole. 

This would mean reducing or removing processed breads, pastas, cereals, grains and sugar from your diet. Eat whole foods and ensure every meal has a balance of protein, fat and unprocessed carbohydrates in it.

The Bottom Line

Generally, with suitable help, buttock muscle pain can be solved and fixed with some sensible investigation of why the problem has arisen. This answer will often not come from a hard-pressed GP in the health service. They tend to only have time to hand out painkillers and are generally not trained to be able to unravel this type of problem. 

Therefore, go and see an expert, whether that is an osteopath or your preferred physical therapist. Seeing someone who is used to analysing and understanding the Musculo-skeletal system may well save you a lot of pain and time.

They can provide you with a treatment plan, rehab work to do at home and hopefully explain why you have the pain. Armed with all this information you can both heal and prevent future problems.

Supplements worth trying to support your injury are CBD, rosehip, glucosamine and chondroitin, green-lipped muscle extract and turmeric.