# Sciatica Source: https://www.corepointclinic.com/conditions/sciatica Chiropractic care and acupuncture are commonly used to help manage sciatica symptoms at CorePoint. Initial chiropractic visits are one hour and cost $240. Sciatica means pain along the sciatic nerve. It typically starts in the low back or buttock and travels down the back of one leg, sometimes with tingling, numbness, or a hot electric quality that ordinary back pain does not have. What follows covers what tends to cause it, when it is an emergency, and how CorePoint uses chiropractic care and acupuncture with sciatica patients. The starting point is a one hour chiropractic exam with Dr. Tina Navarifar for $240. The word gets used loosely. Plenty of leg pain called sciatica is actually a tight hip, a hamstring problem, or pain referred from a joint. Part of the value of a long first exam is finding out whether the sciatic nerve is truly involved, because the answer changes what treatment should look like. ## Two situations that cannot wait Go straight to an emergency department if leg symptoms come with numbness in the saddle area, meaning the groin and inner thighs, or with any new loss of bladder or bowel control. That pattern can indicate cauda equina syndrome, a rare surgical emergency where hours matter. Treat rapidly progressing weakness as urgent too. A foot that has started to slap or drag when you walk, or a leg that buckles under you, needs a physician's evaluation before manual care of any kind. And if sciatica-like pain follows major trauma or comes with fever, the first call is your doctor, not this clinic. ## What is usually behind it In most cases the sciatic nerve or its roots are being irritated somewhere along their path: commonly a bulging or herniated disc in the lower spine, sometimes age-related narrowing of the passages the nerves travel through, occasionally muscular compression deep in the buttock. Which one it is matters less for your peace of mind than this consensus point: most sciatica improves with conservative care over weeks to a couple of months, and surgery is reserved for a small minority of cases. That said, "improves over weeks" reads differently when you are the one who cannot sit through a meeting or a car ride. Nobody here will pretend otherwise. ## The exam does the heavy lifting The first hour at the clinic is spent locating the problem. Dr. Navarifar tests how your spine moves and how your symptoms answer specific positions, checks reflexes, strength, and sensation in the leg, and uses nerve tension tests to see whether the sciatic nerve reproduces your pain. You leave knowing what she believes is irritating the nerve, how confident she is in that read, and what the plan is, including a referral if your exam points toward something that needs medical imaging. ## If it turns out not to be sciatica Not every leg pain story ends at the sciatic nerve. The hip joint, the sacroiliac joint, and muscular trigger points deep in the buttock can each send pain down a leg convincingly. That is usually good news rather than bad, because those problems tend to be simpler to address, and you will be told directly which one you have instead of being treated for the more dramatic diagnosis you walked in with. Care only helps when it is aimed at the right structure, and renaming the problem is sometimes the most useful thing the first hour does. ## How chiropractic care approaches sciatica Treatment aims to take pressure and irritation off the involved nerve: careful joint work in the lower spine and pelvis, soft tissue treatment of the deep hip muscles along the nerve's route, and specific guidance about positions and movements that give the nerve room while it calms down. With a decade of massage practice behind her chiropractic doctorate, Dr. Navarifar tends to treat the whole path of the problem rather than a single spot on the spine. Progress is checked against simple, concrete markers, like how long you can sit or how far down the leg the pain reaches, so both of you can tell whether care is genuinely moving things. Chiropractic follow-ups after the initial $240 hour are 45 minutes each at $150. ## Acupuncture as a second tool Some sciatica patients choose acupuncture alongside chiropractic visits or instead of them, especially when pain is the loudest feature of their week. Research on acupuncture for sciatica specifically is thinner and more mixed than for low back pain generally, so no large claims get made for it here. What can be said fairly: many patients find treatment calming and report their pain feels more manageable during a course of care. The initial acupuncture appointment is one hour for $220 if you want that route, and the two approaches can share a treatment plan since one clinician provides both. ## Living with it between visits While recovering, motion is medicine in small doses. Short walks usually feel better than long sitting. A rolled towel behind the low back helps some sitters. Pushing through sharp, radiating pain to "stretch it out" tends to backfire, aggressive hamstring stretching most of all. You will get instructions matched to what your exam showed rather than a generic handout. Since sciatica so often starts life as a back problem, the [back pain](https://www.corepointclinic.com/conditions/back-pain) page is worth reading alongside this one, especially if your leg symptoms arrived after months of ordinary backaches. ## Related care at CorePoint For sciatica the clinic draws on: - [Chiropractic care](https://www.corepointclinic.com/services/chiropractic), the usual starting point, one hour and $240 to begin - [Acupuncture](https://www.corepointclinic.com/services/acupuncture) for the pain side of the picture If the leg pain has hung on for more than a few days, [book an initial exam](https://www.corepointclinic.com/book) or call (949) 377-4707. ## FAQ **What is used to treat sciatica at CorePoint?** Chiropractic care and acupuncture are both commonly used for sciatica symptoms. Initial chiropractic visits are one hour and cost $240. **How many visits does sciatica usually need?** This varies by patient. Dr. Navarifar will discuss a plan after your initial exam, which is a full hour and costs $240. Medically reviewed by Dr. Tina Navarifar, DC.