The 8 Most Common Treatments for Post-Menopausal Hip Pain, Ranked (2026)

A lot of things can feel like they are reaching the sore spot. A massage gun. A heat pad. A cream. A panel. Something you hold over the outside of the hip and hope is getting where it needs to go. The question is not whether those things are ridiculous. Most of them exist for a reason. The question is whether “on the surface” and “at the relevant tissue” are actually the same thing. That distinction is hard to see when every device looks similar in an ad. More lights. More colours. More promises. Very little help understanding what to compare. The comparison below puts the questions in one place, including where an option is meant to act, what it is designed to do, and what to consider before spending again. It includes the current Halsten Stride option and 90-day guarantee as part of that comparison. https://tryhalsten.com/pages/comparison2

Here is the part nobody told you about that deep burning ache on the outside of your hip. The tendon that causes it sits 3 to 5 centimeters under the skin. Under the fat. Under the muscle. Now think about everything you have tried. The cream worked where the cream touched. The massage gun got the muscle. The heating pad warmed the surface, and the surface was never the problem. Even most red light panels spread their light before it gets anywhere near that depth. It is like charging a phone through a brick wall. So nothing exactly failed. It all just stopped a layer short. 16,332 women with post-menopausal hip pain ranked all 8 of the common treatments on exactly this: what actually reaches the tendon, and what holds after you stop. Seven of them scored between 3.0 and 5.9. The one that scored 9.6 was built around depth: designed to reach 30 to 50mm, used 20 minutes a day while you sit. It costs $180 once, less than a single cortisone shot, and it comes with a 90-day trial. Tap Learn More to see all 8 scores and where your current treatment landed.

For three years, I tried everything for the pain in my hip. Stretches. Ibuprofen. Two different collagen powders. Physical therapy. Cortisone. Massage. Heat. Ice. Rest. Eight different things. Hundreds of dollars. Countless hours. Not one of them worked. And it took me three years, twelve doctor appointments, and one article at 2 in the morning to finally understand why. ======== I'm 54. It started small. Just this stabbing ache on the outside of my hip after my morning walks. The kind of thing you brush off. Slept wrong. Need new shoes. Finally feeling my age. But it didn't go away. It got worse. The pain started waking me up at night. I'd lie on my left side and within minutes this deep burning pressure would build, like someone slowly pressing their thumb into the bone, harder and harder until I couldn't take it. So I'd flip to my right. Twenty minutes later, same thing. Flip again. Left side. Right side. Stare at the ceiling. My husband started calling me a rotisserie chicken. I laughed the first few times. By month four, I wanted to throw my pillow at his head. By month six I was running on maybe three hours of broken sleep. I stopped going to my Thursday morning yoga class. Cancelled on my sister's birthday dinner. Skipped my nephew's soccer games because the metal bleachers were agony. I was becoming the woman who always had a reason she couldn't come. That wasn't who I was. I used to be first on the dance floor at weddings, last one to leave. I once walked nine miles through Rome in a single day just because I didn't want to miss anything. Now I was the one people had learned to stop inviting. And one night my husband rolled over and rested his hand on my hip, gentle, half asleep, the way he has for twenty-three years of marriage. And I flinched. Pulled away. Even that soft pressure was too much. He didn't say anything. But I saw his face in the glow of the alarm clock. We stopped touching the way we used to. I couldn't tell you if it was because I'd pulled away so many times, or because I'd started angling my body away from him in bed, protecting that hip like it was made of glass. Probably both. ======== So I did what you do. I tried to fix it. I started with ibuprofen. Took it daily for so long I stopped counting. It took the edge off for a few hours. The pain always came back exactly where it started. Then heat. Then ice. Both felt wonderful for twenty minutes. Then nothing. I stretched every single morning, all the ones you find online for hip pain. They felt good while I was doing them. By that night the ache was right back, and some mornings the stretching actually seemed to make it worse. I bought a collagen powder because someone swore it rebuilds your joints. Then a second one when the first did nothing. Two tubs later, no difference at all. My doctor gave me cortisone. The first shot was a miracle. Three whole weeks I felt almost normal, slept on my side two nights in a row, started making plans again. Then it wore off. The second shot lasted maybe ten days. The third might as well have been water. I did physical therapy twice a week for two months. Clamshells, bridges, resistance bands, all the little exercises. I felt a bit better for about six weeks. Then it just stopped improving, no matter how hard I worked at it. Some days after PT I could barely make it up my front steps. I paid for massage. It felt incredible for an hour. Then my hip went right back to where it had been. I even tried just resting it. Backed off the walks completely. The pain eased a little, and then came roaring back the second I tried to live my life again. Every single thing helped for a moment and then handed the pain right back. And every doctor said the same three things. Arthritis. Wear and tear. "It's your age." One of them asked if I'd "considered talking to someone." Took me a second to realize he meant a therapist. I sat in my driveway one afternoon, engine off, just staring at my garage door, wondering if this was simply my life now. Wondering if I was being dramatic. Wondering if I just had to accept that this is what 54 feels like. That was my lowest point. ======== But I couldn't accept it. Some stubborn part of me refused to believe there wasn't an answer somewhere. So I kept digging. Late at night, when the pain wouldn't let me sleep, I'd scroll and read and search. And at 2:47 in the morning on a Tuesday, I found an article. I remember the exact time because I'd been watching the clock for hours. It had ranked every treatment women try for hip pain like mine. Not opinions. Actually scored, from worst to best, using answers from thousands of women who'd been through the exact same thing I had. And there it was. My entire list. The stretches, the ibuprofen, the supplements, the cortisone, the PT, the massage. Ranked near the bottom, every one of them, with an explanation for each. Why the things that had failed me had failed all of us, for one reason no doctor had ever once mentioned to me. A reason that traced straight back to menopause. I sat up in bed. Hip screaming at the sudden movement. I barely noticed. For the first time in three years, something actually made sense. ======== I'm not going to pretend I believed it right away. I didn't. I'd been let down by too many so-called miracle fixes to count. My finger was already moving to close the tab. But the thing ranked number one wasn't like anything I'd already tried. It was the only one on the entire list built for exactly what the article said was actually wrong with my hip. Not covering the pain. Not numbing it for a few hours. Built for the real problem underneath it. So I ordered it. Half expecting one more expensive disappointment. ======== It wasn't overnight. The article was honest about that. This was weeks, not days. But a few weeks in, I realized I'd slept on my side through an entire night. Then two nights. Then I stopped counting the good nights the way I used to count the bad ones. I took the long walk again. The one I'd quietly given up on. And one night my husband's hand found my hip in his sleep, and I didn't flinch. I felt like myself again. ======== I'm not telling you any of this to sell you something. I don't know your body. I don't know what's causing your specific pain. But if you've tried the stretches, the ibuprofen, the cortisone, the physical therapy, and you're right back where you started... If your scans keep coming back clear while doctors call it arthritis and the treatments never hold... If you've started wondering whether you're just being dramatic, or whether this is simply what getting older is supposed to feel like... Read the article that ranked them all. It's the same one I found at 2 in the morning. It explains why the things you've tried haven't worked, and it shows you what came out on top. Read it tonight. It might be the first thing about your hip pain that finally makes sense.