Lower Back Pain & Sciatica
It is the number one reason people walk through our door, and the number one thing people are told to just live with. You do not have to. Dr. Andrew Allen finds out why your back hurts, and then treats the why.
Over 20 years of experience · Wheat Ridge, Arvada, Lakewood, Golden & West DenverYou have probably already tried everything
Ibuprofen. A new mattress. That stretch your buddy swears by. A doctor who told you to rest and gave you a muscle relaxer. Maybe an X-ray that came back looking fine, which somehow made it worse, because now your back still hurts and nobody can tell you why. Lower back pain and sciatica are not mysteries. They are almost always the end result of something upstream that has been going on for a while. The goal at Lakeside Spine & Injury Center is to find that something.
How lower back pain and sciatica actually show up
Sciatica is not a diagnosis. It is a description of what a compressed or irritated nerve feels like. Here is the range we hear every week:
The morning lockup
You feel roughly 90 years old for the first twenty minutes of the day, then loosen up, then stiffen right back up by evening.
Pain down one leg
A line of ache, burning, or electricity that runs from the low back or glute down the back of the thigh, sometimes past the knee, sometimes to the foot.
Numbness or pins and needles
Tingling in the calf, foot, or toes. Occasionally a foot that feels like it fell asleep and never woke up.
Cannot sit through a movie
Sitting is the enemy. The drive down Wadsworth, the desk at work, the flight to see family. All of it lights you up.
The catch
You bend to grab a sock and something grabs back. Sharp, brief, and enough to make you rethink socks entirely.
Weakness
Your leg feels unreliable. Stairs feel different. You are not sure you trust it on uneven trail.
It moves around
Left side one week, right side the next. That usually means the problem is a movement pattern, not a spot.
It always comes back
You get relief for two weeks, then it returns. Relief that does not last is a sign the cause was never addressed.
Cough, sneeze, ouch
Pain that spikes when you cough, sneeze, or strain often points toward disc involvement and is worth evaluating properly.
Your back is where you feel it. It is rarely where it started.
The lower back is the middle child of the body. It gets blamed for problems the hips, feet, and core created. When Dr. Allen evaluates lower back pain and sciatica, these are the root causes he is actively ruling in or out:
Hips that stopped doing their job
Your hips are built to be the engine. When they lose rotation or extension, the lumbar spine picks up the slack, and it is not designed to. This is the single most common driver we find, and it is why so much lower back pain is really a hip pain problem in disguise.
Disc irritation or herniation
A disc that has lost height, bulged, or herniated can crowd a nerve root and produce the classic down-the-leg symptoms. Not every disc finding causes pain, which is why imaging alone never tells the whole story. More on herniated discs.
Sacroiliac joint dysfunction
The SI joint connects your spine to your pelvis. When it moves too much or too little, it produces a deep, one-sided ache right in that dimple above the glute, and it loves to imitate sciatica.
Piriformis and deep glute involvement
The sciatic nerve runs right past the piriformis. A chronically tight, overworked deep glute can compress or irritate it directly, no disc required.
A core that is strong in the wrong way
Plenty of people with terrible backs have great abs. Bracing, breathing, and timing matter more than crunches. If your deep stabilizers fire late, your spine absorbs load it should never see.
Feet and ankles
Every step sends force up the chain. Restricted ankles, fallen arches, or a history of plantar fasciitis change how you load your pelvis thousands of times a day.
Thoracic spine stiffness
If your mid back does not rotate or extend, your low back does it instead. This shows up constantly in desk workers and is closely tied to upper back pain.
Old injuries you forgot about
The ankle you rolled in college. The rear-end collision six years ago. Bodies build workarounds, and workarounds have expiration dates. If there was a crash involved, see our car accident injury care.
Sustained postures, not bad posture
There is no perfect posture. There is only too much of any one position. Ninety minutes on I-70 followed by eight hours at a desk is a load problem, not a character flaw.
Training that outpaced tissue
You added mileage, weight, or vertical faster than your tissue adapted. Common in athletes and active adults, and very fixable once identified.
How Dr. Allen figures out what is actually wrong
You get evaluated and treated on day one. Not a clipboard and a handshake and a see-you-next-week.
We listen to the whole story
When it started, what makes it better, what makes it worse, what you have already tried, and what you are actually trying to get back to. A patient who wants to ski Loveland in November is a different case than one who wants to sleep through the night.
We watch you move
A functional movement assessment. Bending, rotating, squatting, walking, single-leg loading. Pain tells you where. Movement tells you why. This is where hip restriction, thoracic stiffness, and asymmetry stop hiding.
Orthopedic and neurological testing
Specific tests to differentiate disc involvement from SI joint from piriformis from facet irritation. Reflexes, sensation, and strength when leg symptoms are present. This is what separates a real diagnosis from a guess.
Hands-on assessment
Dr. Allen palpates the segments, joints, and soft tissue directly. Twenty years of hands find things that a form does not.
We connect it to your life
Your commute, your desk, your sport, your garden beds, your sleep position. The cause is usually sitting in your calendar.
You get treated the same day
You leave your first visit having actually been treated, and knowing in plain English what is going on and what the plan is. If we do not think we are the right fit for your case, we will tell you and point you where to go.
Colorado is hard on a lower back
We would not live anywhere else. But the Front Range lifestyle has a signature, and after twenty years Dr. Allen can usually guess your hobby from your movement pattern.
Ski and snowboard season
Deep flexion, rotation under load, and the occasional yard sale on a mogul field. The I-70 corridor sends us low backs from November through April, plus the drive itself, which is two hours of seated compression each way.
The garden beds
Wheat Ridge did not earn the Carnation City name by accident. Hours of kneeling, digging, and hauling mulch is repeated lumbar flexion with a load. Spring is reliably busy.
Snow shoveling
Bend, twist, lift, throw, repeat, in the cold, before coffee. Every storm delivers a fresh round of driveway backs, usually by Tuesday.
Clear Creek Trail miles
Runners and cyclists logging real volume. Repetitive, one-plane loading with tight hip flexors and quiet glutes is a low back problem waiting for a start date.
The Denver commute
Wadsworth, Kipling, I-70, then eight hours at a desk downtown. Sustained sitting is one of the highest-pressure positions a disc ever sees.
Fourteeners and weekend volume
Sedentary Monday through Friday, then twelve miles and 4,000 feet of descent on Saturday. Descending is eccentric loading, and your back keeps the receipts.
Altitude and dehydration
Discs are largely water. Colorado is dry and thin, and most people here are running a quart low without knowing it. It is not the cause, but it does not help.
Wadsworth and Kipling traffic
Fender benders are a fact of life on these corridors. Low back and SI injuries from a collision are common and often show up weeks later.
Trail work and DIY season
Fence posts, retaining walls, hauling flagstone, the new deck. Colorado homeowners do their own work, and the low back funds the project.
How we treat lower back pain and sciatica
There is no single technique that fixes a back. Dr. Allen builds care around what your evaluation actually found, which is why no two plans here look the same.
Chiropractic adjustments
Targeted spinal manipulation to restore movement to restricted lumbar, SI, and thoracic segments so the load spreads out instead of concentrating in one angry spot.
Soft tissue therapy
Hands-on work on the deep glutes, hip flexors, QL, and lumbar erectors to address the tension and adhesion that keeps pulling things back out of position.
Dry needling
Thin monofilament needles into trigger points that hands cannot reach, including the piriformis and deep hip rotators. Often the fastest route to relief in stubborn sciatica.
Cupping therapy
Decompression-based soft tissue work that may help circulation and tissue mobility across the lumbar and glute region.
Therapeutic exercise
A short, specific set of things to actually do, aimed at the deficit we found. Not a photocopied sheet of twenty stretches you will never do.
Functional movement assessment
The reassessment loop. We re-test what we tested so you can see the change, and so we know whether the plan is working or needs to change.
Lower back pain & sciatica FAQ
How long until I feel better?
It depends entirely on what is driving it and how long it has been going on. Some patients notice a meaningful change after the first visit. A disc issue that has been building for three years is a longer road. Dr. Allen will give you an honest estimate after the evaluation rather than a number designed to sell you a package.
Do I need an X-ray or MRI first?
Usually not. Imaging is valuable when specific findings warrant it, and Dr. Allen will tell you if your case is one of them. It is worth knowing that plenty of people with clean scans have real pain, and plenty of people with ugly scans feel fine. Imaging is one input, not a verdict.
Is it sciatica or just back pain?
Sciatica means the sciatic nerve is being irritated somewhere along its path, which typically produces symptoms below the knee. Pain that stays in the low back and glute is usually something else. The orthopedic and neurological testing at your evaluation is what tells the difference.
Will I have to come three times a week forever?
No. There are no long-term contracts and no forced treatment plans here. The goal is to get you out of pain, teach you what caused it, and send you back to your life.
Can chiropractic help a herniated disc?
Many disc-related cases respond well to conservative care including adjustments, soft tissue work, and specific loading. Some do not, and some require a surgical opinion. Dr. Allen evaluates first and tells you honestly which category you appear to be in.
Should I rest or keep moving?
For the vast majority of lower back pain, prolonged rest makes things worse, not better. The right kind of movement is usually part of the treatment. What that movement is depends on what we find, which is exactly why the evaluation comes first.
My back pain started after a car accident. Is that different?
Yes, in both the clinical picture and the paperwork. See our car accident injury page for how those cases are handled.
Do you take my insurance?
Coverage questions are best answered directly. Call or text (303) 351-0744, or check the FAQ.
Stop managing it. Start fixing it.
Lower back pain and sciatica are not something you age into and live with. Get a real evaluation from a doctor with twenty years of hands, and find out what is actually going on.
Lakeside Spine & Injury Center · 6073 W 44th Ave #101, Wheat Ridge, CO 80033 · Proudly serving Wheat Ridge, Arvada, Lakewood, Golden, Edgewater, Applewood, and West Denver.