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

We scored the eight treatments women actually try, using responses from 16,332 women who took part in a survey, all with post-menopausal hip pain, to find which ones reach the tissue that is breaking down and which ones stop a layer short.

Together Through Menopause Editorial Team  ·  Updated July 2026  ·  21 min read

You have probably already tried four of these

If you are a woman over 50 with persistent pain on the outside of your hip, you have been through a list. Most women have been through the same one, in roughly the same order.

Stretches you were told to do every morning, that felt good for a minute and changed nothing.

Ibuprofen taken daily for so long you stopped counting.

A collagen powder, then a different collagen powder.

Physical therapy that helped for six weeks, then stopped helping.

A massage. A heating pad. A cortisone shot that wore off on schedule.

Still the same pain, in the same place, at the same hour of the night.

You did what you were told, and you did it consistently. So here is what 16,332 other women were told to do, and how many of them said it let them down.

Treatment

Said it disappointed them

Stretching routines

70.1%

Pain medication

69.8%

Supplements

64.5%

Physical therapy

59.3%

Massage therapy

43.0%

Complete rest

34.7%

Cortisone injections

31.9%

n = 15,340 for this question. Sample sizes vary across the survey because not every respondent answered every question. Total respondents: 16,332.

Only 10.4% found relief on the first attempt. 58.2% tried three or more things first.

The single most common loss was not hiking, and it was not the grandchildren. It was sleeping on her own side, named by 82.6%. One woman put the nightly result in her own words: “Turning over nightly like a rotisserie chicken.” Second was walking her usual distances, at 68.0%.

Now read that list of treatments again, because something about it is strange.

Almost none of it is unreasonable. Every one of those is a legitimate treatment, recommended by real doctors, that helps real conditions. Cortisone genuinely reduces pain. Physical therapy genuinely corrects movement. Stretching genuinely helps tight muscle.

So the question this article exists to answer is not why the treatments are bad.

It is why treatments that work do not work here.

Inflammation, or degeneration

The outer hip pain that arrives during or after menopause is most commonly gluteal tendinopathy. Not arthritis. Not bursitis. It is a structural breakdown of the tendons along the outside of the hip, and it has a specific cause.

When your estrogen dropped, collagen production slowed with it. Collagen is what tendons are made from. Your gluteal tendons have been carrying your body weight every day since, with a repair signal that stopped arriving.

That is degeneration. It is not inflammation. And that one word decides which of the eight treatments below can help you.

If the problem were inflammation, anti-inflammatories would have worked, and they would have kept working. Ice would have worked. Cortisone, the most powerful anti-inflammatory available outside a hospital, would have fixed it permanently rather than for six weeks at a time.

The reason those treatments give relief and then hand the pain back is that every one of them is correctly doing a job that is not the job.

Anti-inflammatories treat inflammation. Massage treats muscle. Stretching treats tightness. Rest reduces load.

Not one of them rebuilds a tendon.

Four questions that tell you which one you have

Gluteal tendinopathy is routinely diagnosed as arthritis or bursitis, and the difference stops being subtle once you know what separates them.

01

Did your X-ray or MRI come back clear?

Arthritis shows on an X-ray as joint damage. Tendon degeneration does not show on either scan. A clear result is one of the most common reasons this gets missed.

02

Where exactly is the pain?

Arthritis sits deep in the groin and the hip socket. Gluteal tendinopathy sits on the outside of the hip, at the bony point you can feel with your hand, and often shoots down the outside of the thigh.

03

Does it build through the day, and peak at night?

Arthritis loosens as you move. Gluteal tendinopathy worsens with use and peaks at night, which is why side-sleeping is the first thing to go.

04

Did it start around or after menopause?

This is the question almost nobody is asked. Arthritis develops gradually over many years. Gluteal tendinopathy often arrives within a few years of estrogen decline, in a woman who was fine before.

If you recognized yourself in three or four of those, the list below was scored for you.

Why almost nothing you have tried can physically reach it

You can feel the bone. That is what makes this confusing.

The bony point on the outside of your hip sits close to the surface, which is why you can press it with your fingers, and why lying on that side hurts. But the tendons do not sit on top of it. They wrap around and attach across it, underneath the IT band and the bulk of the gluteal muscle.

What you can touch is the landmark. What has broken down is more than an inch below your fingertips, roughly 30 to 50 millimeters, under fat and muscle.

That single fact eliminates most of this list, and it eliminates each one for a different reason.

Now consider what each treatment has to do to get there.

A capsule has to survive digestion, enter your bloodstream as fragments, then be routed by your body to a tendon it does not rank as a priority.

A hand, a massage gun or a heating pad reaches muscle. The muscle sits on top of the tendon.

A stretch pulls on the tendon. It does not rebuild it.

A needle does reach the site, but it delivers a molecule that silences pain rather than one that rebuilds tissue.

A surface light device delivers energy that scatters and fades before it arrives at that depth.

Title

Think of it like a flashlight held against a wall. The light hits the surface. The room on the other side stays dark.

 

Your gluteal tendons are in that room.

The question is not whether a treatment is good. It is whether it arrives, and whether what arrives is a repair signal or a comfort signal.

What we scored every treatment against

Seven criteria. They apply equally to a capsule, a stretch, an injection and a device, which is the point.

01

Does it reach the tendon?

More than an inch down, past skin, fat and muscle. If it stops a layer short, nothing else on this list matters.

Title

02

Does it address collagen, or only inflammation?

This is a degenerative condition. A treatment that reduces inflammation without restarting collagen production is managing a symptom of the problem, not the problem.

Title

03

Does it work when estrogen is already gone?

Several treatments here quietly assume a hormonal environment that no longer exists. For most women reading this, estrogen dropped years ago.

Title

04

Does the effect hold after you stop?

If the pain returns within days of stopping, the tissue never changed. You were renting relief.

Title

05

Is it safe to continue for months?

Some treatments here are appropriate once and harmful repeatedly. That distinction is rarely made clear.

Title

06

Can you realistically keep it up for eight to twelve weeks?

Tendon repair is cumulative. Anything requiring an appointment or forty minutes of floor work will not survive the second month, however well it scores on paper.

Title

07

What do you lose if it does not work?

Money already spent, and months of a degenerative condition continuing.

Across all eight treatments, the same four failure patterns appear.

The Comfort Trap

It works, briefly, every single time. Heat, ice, rest, massage, a hot bath. Relief during, pain after. The reliability of the relief is exactly what keeps a woman doing it for six years without noticing that nothing has changed.

The Wrong Tissue

Muscle work applied to a tendon problem. Percussion, deep tissue, foam rolling, stretching. Gluteal tendinopathy feels like tightness, so tightness is what gets treated. The tendon is a layer below, and with percussion and certain stretches it is being loaded rather than helped.

The Delivery Problem

Right idea, cannot arrive. Collagen supplements, joint capsules, surface light devices. The reasoning is sound and the mechanism never reaches the tissue.

The Managed Decline

At some point most women build a system. Stretch in the morning. Heat at night. Ibuprofen on the bad days. A pillow between the knees. Stop doing the long walk. It functions well enough that it quietly stops feeling like a problem to solve.

Managing is not healing. The system holds the pain at a tolerable level while the tendon carries the same load every day with slightly less structure than it had the month before.

the top 8 devices ranked

Ranked against the seven criteria above. Scores reflect what each treatment can do for post-menopausal gluteal tendinopathy specifically, not its general merit.

1. Triple Wavelength Red Light Therapy

Wearable triple-wavelength light therapy | Outer hip

 9.6/10 

Earlier we compared this to a flashlight held against a wall. Here is where that stops being true.


A wall is opaque. You are not. In a dark room, press a flashlight into your palm and the other side glows red. That is light passing through skin, fat, blood and muscle and coming out the far side. The question was never whether light travels through tissue. It was whether a given device sends the right wavelengths, at enough intensity, to arrive where your tendons actually are.


Halsten Stride is the only entry on this list designed for this specific condition in this specific population. A wearable light therapy wrap holds a three-wavelength panel directly over the outer hip for twenty minutes a day, hands free, worn sitting down.

660nm opens up blood flow near the surface and clears the path.

830nm goes deeper, and it is the one that does the work. Inside every cell are tiny structures called mitochondria that produce the cell's energy. 830nm light is absorbed there, and photobiomodulation literature documents energy increases of over 50% and up to 150%. That extra energy switches on the cells that build collagen, and collagen is the material your tendons are made of.

940nm goes deepest, reaching the tendon itself. It calms the pain signaling and helps the new collagen line up into properly aligned fibers instead of disorganized scar tissue.

That sequence is the difference between comfort and repair. It is the only entry here that supplies a signal rather than a substance, and the only one aimed at the deficit menopause actually created.

What it does well

Delivers to tendon depth rather than skin depth

Addresses collagen production rather than inflammation

Hands free, twenty minutes, worn while sitting or resting

Built for post-menopausal outer hip pain specifically, not general joint health

90-day money-back guarantee

Where it falls short

Direct only. Not on Amazon, not in stores.

Worn seated or resting, not during activity

Structural change builds over eight to twelve weeks. Anything promising a same-day fix for a degenerative condition is not being straight with you.

Higher upfront cost than a heating pad, though it is one purchase with no refills

The Verdict:

The only entry on this list that gives the tendon back what menopause took away, rather than managing what its absence causes.

2. Physical Therapy

Clinical movement therapy | 6 to 12 weeks

 5.9/10 

Physical therapy earns the highest score of anything else on this list, and it earns it honestly. A good physiotherapist identifies the movement patterns loading your hip badly, corrects your gait, strengthens the gluteus medius and minimus, and teaches you how to stop making it worse. It has the strongest evidence base of any conservative approach to this condition.

 

The limit is what loading can and cannot do. Progressive loading works by asking the tendon to adapt, and adaptation requires collagen synthesis. In a post-menopausal woman whose collagen production has been slowed since estrogen dropped, the tendon is being asked to rebuild with material it can no longer produce at the same rate. That is why 59.3% listed physical therapy as a disappointment, and why the pattern is so consistent: real improvement for about six weeks, then a plateau no amount of extra effort moves.

 

Physical therapy is not wrong. It is incomplete.

What it does well

Corrects the movement patterns overloading the tendon

Strongest evidence base of any conservative approach

Supervised, individualized, adjusted as you go

Genuine improvement, particularly in the first six weeks

Where it falls short

Depends on collagen synthesis the body has already slowed

Improvement commonly plateaus rather than continuing

Around $1,200 a month, and it stops when the payments stop

Loading progressed too fast can aggravate an already degenerating tendon

Almost never screens for the hormonal cause

The Verdict:

The best of the conventional options, doing correct work on a tendon that has lost the ability to finish it.

3. Cortisone Injections

Corticosteroid injection | In-clinic

 5.1/10 

The most effective pain relief on this list, and one of the few entries that genuinely earns the word works. A well-placed injection can take severe outer hip pain down to almost nothing within days. For a woman who has not slept a full night in eight months, that is not a small thing, and this article is not going to pretend otherwise.


It scores here because of what happens next. Cortisone suppresses inflammation. Gluteal tendinopathy is degenerative. The injection removes the alarm without touching what set it off, so relief runs weeks to a few months and then recedes. That is why so many women end up describing a schedule rather than a recovery.


The larger issue is repetition. Corticosteroids inhibit collagen synthesis at the injection site. In a tendon already producing less collagen than it needs, repeated injections compound the exact deficit causing the problem, which is why most clinicians limit how many go into the same tendon.


Notice that cortisone has the lowest disappointment rate on this list at 31.9%. That is not because it solves the problem. It is because it delivers what it promises. The disappointment arrives later, on the calendar.

What it does well

Fastest and most complete pain relief short of surgery

Can restore sleep within days

Physician administered, precisely placed

Genuinely appropriate for an acute flare

Where it falls short

Suppresses inflammation in a condition driven by degeneration

Relief recedes on a predictable schedule

Repeated injections inhibit collagen synthesis in the tendon

Clinically limited in how often it can be repeated

Around $800 per injection, while the breakdown continues underneath

The Verdict:

Real relief, delivered by a mechanism that works against the tissue over time.

Title

“Three cortisone injections over eighteen months. Each wore off in a month. Eight weeks into Stride my morning stiffness is gone. Sleeping on my side again.”

— Patricia W., Age 59, Georgia. Verified Purchase.

Check Out the #1 Ranked Option

4. Red Light Panels and Wraps

Generic consumer photobiomodulation | Panel or wrap

 4.7/10 

This is the category most likely to look like a cheaper version of the right answer, so it deserves a careful reading rather than a dismissal.


Photobiomodulation is real, well documented, and the correct mechanism for this condition. The variable is not whether light therapy works. It is whether a given device delivers the right wavelengths, at sufficient intensity, to a target more than an inch beneath the skin. Most consumer devices are calibrated for skin: wound healing, complexion, surface collagen. Those are legitimate applications at legitimate depths, a few millimeters. The gluteal tendon is 30 to 50 millimeters down. A device built for the dermis is not underpowered for the tendon, it is aimed somewhere else entirely.


The second variable is consistency. A panel you hold or prop against your hip loses to a wrap you fasten and forget, not on paper but at week seven, when repair is still incomplete and the sessions have quietly stopped.


One practical test. Anything in this category should publish its exact wavelengths in nanometers and its irradiance. If it lists neither, or lists only a color, that is your answer.

What it does well

Correct underlying mechanism

Non-invasive, no drugs, no needles

Some units do use appropriate wavelengths

Often lower upfront cost

Where it falls short

Most are calibrated for skin depth, not connective tissue

Wavelengths and intensity frequently undisclosed

Panels must be held or propped, which collapses compliance over eight to twelve weeks

Whole-body panels disperse energy instead of concentrating it at the hip

Not designed around the post-menopausal collagen deficit

The Verdict:

Right mechanism, usually aimed at the wrong depth, and rarely built to be used consistently enough to matter.

Title

“I had given up on red light therapy after a panel device did nothing. The difference is that Stride is actually designed to reach the tendons. By week three I was sleeping through the night.”

— Susan K., 57, Ohio. Verified purchase.

5. Collagen and Joint Supplements

Oral supplement | Daily

 4.2/10 

64.5% named supplements a disappointment, which is striking, because this is the only category on the list that correctly identifies the missing ingredient. Your tendons are short on collagen. Collagen supplements contain collagen. The logic is sound.


The failure is delivery, then signal. Ingested collagen is broken down in digestion into peptides and amino acids. What enters your bloodstream is raw material, not collagen, and your body routes it wherever it judges the need greatest. Gluteal tendons have relatively poor blood supply and sit low on that list.


Signal matters more. Tendon collagen is produced by fibroblasts, and fibroblasts build in response to signals. Estrogen was one of them. When it dropped, the instruction slowed, not the supply. Delivering more raw material to a cell that is no longer being told to build does not restart production. The factory is not out of material. It is waiting for an order.


Glucosamine, chondroitin and hyaluronic acid have reasonable evidence behind them for cartilage and general joint comfort. Cartilage is not tendon, and this is not a cartilage condition.

What it does well

Correctly identifies collagen as the missing element

Easy, inexpensive, safe long term

Reasonable evidence for general joint health

No side effects of consequence

Where it falls short

Oral collagen is digested before it reaches any tendon

Distribution is systemic and cannot be directed to the hip

Supplies material, not the signal that stopped

Formulated for cartilage and joints rather than tendon

Ongoing monthly cost with no defined endpoint

The Verdict:

The right ingredient, delivered to the wrong place, for a shortage that is not actually a shortage of ingredient.

6.  Stretching Routines

Self-directed movement | Daily

 3.6/10 

The most disappointing treatment in the entire survey. 70.1% of women named it, ahead of medication, ahead of supplements, ahead of physical therapy. That deserves an explanation, because stretching is also the most universally recommended and least questioned thing on this list.


Stretching is prescribed for tight muscle. Gluteal tendinopathy feels like tightness in the outer hip, so stretching is the intuitive response, and the relief during a stretch is real. It is also brief, which is exactly why the routine survives for years without producing change. It rewards you every morning and delivers nothing by December.


The mechanical problem is more specific than it does not help. Several of the most commonly recommended hip stretches, particularly those that pull the leg across the body, compress the gluteal tendon against the bone at the outside of the hip. In a healthy tendon that is unremarkable. In a degenerating one it is repeated compressive load applied directly to the site of the breakdown, first thing every morning, for years.
A tendon that has lost structural collagen does not need to be lengthened. It needs to be rebuilt.

What it does well

Free, immediate, requires nothing

Genuine relief during the stretch itself

Maintains general mobility and range of motion

Builds a daily habit, which is worth something

Where it falls short

Treats a tendon problem as a muscle problem

Several common hip stretches compress the degenerating tendon against bone

No mechanism to rebuild collagen or tendon structure

Relief is momentary and does not accumulate

Highest disappointment rate of any treatment surveyed, at 70.1%

The Verdict:

The most recommended treatment for this condition, the most disappointing in practice, and in some of its most common forms, repeated load on the tissue already breaking down.

Explore the #1 Ranked Option

7. Massage and Percussion Therapy

Manual and percussive soft tissue work

 3.4/10 

Massage does what it claims. It releases muscle tension, improves local circulation, and it feels good. 43.0% of surveyed women still listed it as a disappointment.


The reason is anatomical. Massage and percussion act on muscle and fascia. The gluteal tendons sit beneath both, where the muscle attaches to the bone. Pressure applied at the surface reaches the layer above the problem.


Percussion adds a second issue. A degenerating tendon is structurally compromised, and repetitive mechanical impact applied directly over it adds load to tissue already failing under the load it has. The typical report is an hour or two of real relief followed by a return to the same baseline, and occasionally a slightly worse one.

What it does well

Genuine muscle relief and improved local circulation

Real short-term comfort and stress reduction

Addresses the secondary compensation built up after months of guarding

It feels good, and that counts for something after months of this

Where it falls short

Acts on muscle and fascia, above the affected tendon

No mechanism affecting collagen or tendon structure

Percussion adds impact load to compromised tissue

Relief measured in hours

Recurring cost with no cumulative structural effect

The Verdict:

Legitimate work on the wrong layer, and in percussive form, load applied directly to the site of the breakdown.

8. Pain Medication and Anti-Inflammatories

Oral NSAIDs and analgesics | Daily

 3.0/10 

69.8% named pain medication a disappointment, and it lands last because it is the one entry that does nothing to the tendon at all.


Ibuprofen, naproxen and similar drugs act on the inflammatory pathway. If the outer hip pain of menopause were an inflammatory condition, they would sit near the top of this list. It is not.


The name is part of the confusion. Tendinitis ends in -itis, which means inflammation, and that is what doctors called it for decades. But current understanding of chronic gluteal tendon pain describes degeneration, with very little inflammation involved. Which is exactly why a drug aimed at inflammation does not move it, and why so many women take these daily for years while the pain never changes.


There is a further consideration for this population. There is evidence that NSAIDs interfere with tendon healing, and daily long-term use carries gastrointestinal, kidney and cardiovascular considerations that matter more after sixty, not less.


Taken occasionally to get through a bad night, medication is entirely reasonable. Taken daily for years as the primary strategy, it removes the signal telling you something needs attention while the tissue underneath continues to change.

What it does well

Widely available, inexpensive, works within an hour

Makes a bad night manageable

Appropriate for a genuine acute inflammatory flare

No appointment, no equipment, no learning curve

Where it falls short

Targets inflammation in a condition that is primarily degenerative

No collagen or tendon repair mechanism of any kind

Evidence that NSAIDs may interfere with tendon healing

Long-term daily use carries real risk for women over 60

Masks the signal while the breakdown continues

The Verdict:

The clearest example of the pattern behind this entire list. Relief with no repair, taken daily, for years.

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What about hrt?

Only 11.3% of surveyed women had tried it, the lowest figure on the list, and it deserves a fair answer because it is the one option that addresses the actual hormonal cause.


Systemic estrogen therapy can influence collagen-related changes across the body, and some women do report improvement in tendon and joint symptoms. It is the only entry here acting on the cause rather than the consequence.


Three limits. It is systemic rather than targeted, so the gluteal tendon receives whatever a whole-body dose happens to deliver to a tissue with limited blood supply. It is a medical decision with its own risk profile, right for some women and not for others, and one to make with your doctor rather than an article. And for most women reading this, years have passed since estrogen dropped, and a restored signal does not automatically rebuild structure already lost.


Worth discussing with your physician. Not a hip treatment.

What about heat, ice, support wraps and rest?

Grouped together because they share one mechanism: comfort.


Complete rest was named a disappointment by 34.7%, which surprises people. Rest reduces load, and reduced load on a painful tendon does feel better. But tendons need load to stay strong, so extended rest can leave the tendon weaker than it started, and the pain returns the moment normal life does.


Heat improves local circulation and feels genuinely good. Ice numbs. Compression sleeves and support wraps offer comfort and a little stability, and only 4.8% named generic braces a disappointment, mostly because expectations were low to begin with.


None of them have a mechanism that changes the tendon. They are all reasonable things to use for comfort. None of them belongs in a column marked treatment.

Side-by-side comparison 

Criteria Stride PT Cortisone Panels Suppl. Stretch Massage Meds
Reaches the tendon (30 to 50mm) Yes Partial Yes Partial ×No Partial ×No ×No
Rebuilds collagen Yes Partial ×No Partial ×No ×No ×No ×No
Works with estrogen gone Yes Partial ×No Partial ×No ×No ×No ×No
Holds after you stop Yes Partial ×No Partial ×No ×No ×No ×No
Safe for months Yes Yes ×No Yes Yes Partial Partial ×No
Realistic 8 to 12 wks Yes Partial ×No Partial Yes Partial ×No Yes
Risk-free trial 90 day ×No ×No Varies ×No n/a ×No ×No
Cost over 12 weeks $180 $3,600+ $800 ea $150+ $120+ Free $600+ $30+
Overall score 9.6 5.9 5.1 4.7 4.2 3.6 3.4 3.0

Scroll to compare all treatments

The list does not resolve into a ranking

After scoring eight treatments against seven criteria, what comes out is not a leaderboard. It is two groups.


Seven of them manage what the breakdown causes. Pain, stiffness, tightness, inflammation, the ache that arrives at 2am. Several do it well. Cortisone does it better than anything else available without a hospital.


One supplies the tendon with the signal to rebuild.


That is the entire finding, and it explains the pattern nearly every woman in the survey described. Not that nothing worked. That everything worked, for a while.


Why this is not only a shopping decision


When 15,630 women were asked what they feared most, the answers did not come back as one fear. They came back as a sequence.

 

Losing the ability to walk their usual distances came first, named by more than 1,700 of them. Then surgery. Then a wheelchair. Then losing independence. Then becoming a burden to the people they had spent a lifetime taking care of.

None of that is inevitable, and none of it is imminent.


But a degenerative condition is by definition one where waiting is not neutral. The tendon carries the same load tomorrow with slightly less structure than it has today, and it has been doing that since the year your estrogen dropped.

“The women who improved were not the ones who tried the most treatments. They were the ones who found the only one aimed at the actual problem.”

Together Through Menopause editorial team

Star summary

# Treatment Stars Score
1 Halsten Stride
9.6 / 10
2 Physical Therapy
5.9 / 10
3 Cortisone Injections
5.1 / 10
4 Red Light Panels
4.7 / 10
5 Collagen Supplements
4.2 / 10
6 Stretching Routines
3.6 / 10
7 Massage and Percussion
3.4 / 10
8 Pain Medication
3.0 / 10

Try Halsten Stride risk-free for 90 days

The only treatment on this list built specifically for post-menopausal gluteal tendon repair. Twenty minutes a day, worn sitting down, at home.

Picture an ordinary night three months from now. You roll onto the side you have not slept on in years, and you stay there until morning. And on Saturday you take the long walk you stopped taking, and someone notices before you say anything.

See Halsten Stride and Current Pricing

90-Day Money-Back Guarantee | Free shipping | Not sold on Amazon or in stores

One purchase. No subscription, no refills, no appointments, no clinic visits.

Everything else on this list either costs you money every month or costs you the months themselves. None of it comes with a promise that your hip will be better in ninety days. Stride does. Use it daily for ninety days. If your hip is no better, send it back for a full refund.

Together Through Menopause  |  Independent Health Reviews for Women 50+

This page contains sponsored content. Together Through Menopause may receive compensation when you purchase through links on this page. Editorial standards are maintained independently.

See Halsten Stride and Current Pricing

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Current Pricing