Peripheral neuropathy is nerve dysfunction outside the brain and spinal cord—often felt as burning, tingling, numbness, or sensitivity in the feet or hands. Symptoms can be mild or disruptive and may have multiple causes, including diabetes, injuries, or nerve irritation. At Mountain View Pain Center, we help clarify what may be contributing to your symptoms and build a plan to reduce discomfort and improve daily function.
When to Seek Urgent Care
Seek urgent evaluation if you have new or worsening weakness, foot drop, loss of bowel or bladder control, saddle numbness, severe unrelenting pain after trauma, fever/chills, or rapidly worsening numbness/tingling.
We start by reviewing your symptom history, where symptoms occur, and how they affect your daily function. Your visit may include a neurologic screen (strength, sensation, reflexes), movement testing, and assessment of posture and mechanics that can contribute to nerve irritation. If findings suggest additional testing or coordination with your primary care provider is appropriate (labs, nerve testing, imaging, or referral), we’ll guide the next steps.
Treatment depends on what’s contributing to symptoms, but the focus is reducing discomfort and improving function.
Treatment options to help manage nerve-related pain and improve quality of life when appropriate.
Strength, balance, and mobility work to improve stability, gait mechanics, and confidence with activity.
Hands-on care to support mobility and reduce contributing tension patterns, tailored to symptoms and comfort.
A natural option that may support symptom relief and relaxation, often used as part of a broader plan.
Every Mountain View Pain Center clinic has Pain Management, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic care and Acupuncture in the same building — so if peripheral neuropathy needs more than one kind of care, you do not get handed off to another practice.
Colorado: Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Lakewood, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, Lone Tree, Northglenn, Lafayette, Greeley, Fort Collins.
Arizona: Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, Peoria.
No referral is needed in either state. Find your nearest clinic on the full clinic map, or call Colorado (720) 749-5599 or Arizona (602) 325-2024.
Peripheral neuropathy almost always announces itself at the far ends first — the toes and the soles, then the whole foot, then the ankle and lower leg. The hands follow later, and usually only once the feet are well established. Clinicians call the resulting pattern stocking-and-glove, and it is one of the more useful things about the condition, because it is recognizable before anything else is.
The reason is length. The nerves running to your feet are the longest in the body, so whatever is damaging them — metabolic, nutritional, toxic, inflammatory — shows up at the tip of the longest wire first. That is also why it tends to be symmetrical. A numbness that affects one foot and not the other is usually a different problem, often compression of a nerve root in the low back rather than a true peripheral neuropathy, and it is worth saying so at the first visit because it changes the whole workup.
Pain that runs from the buttock down one leg belongs with sciatica instead. The two get confused constantly, and they are treated differently.
People describe neuropathy in a small and consistent set of ways: burning, like standing too close to a fire; pins and needles that never quite resolve; a buzzing or electrical quality; or a thick, padded numbness, as though there is a layer of felt between the foot and the floor. Many people have several of these at once, and the mix changes through the day.
The two details that most often make people book an appointment are neither of those. The first is allodynia — the bedsheet hurting, or a sock feeling unbearable, when the same foot is numb to a firm press. The second is balance. When the feet stop reporting accurately, moving through a dark room or over uneven ground gets noticeably harder, and people start reaching for a wall without consciously deciding to.
Symptoms that are worse at night, and quieter when you are up and moving, are typical rather than unusual.
Neuropathy is generally a slow condition. It usually creeps over months and years rather than arriving in a week, and the sequence tends to run from odd sensation, to discomfort, to pain, to numbness — with numbness being the stage people are least likely to report, because it does not hurt.
That is exactly backwards from the risk. A numb foot is a foot that will not tell you about a blister, a stone in the shoe, or a small cut, and the complications that follow come from lack of warning rather than from pain. Anyone with an insensate foot should be checking it visually every day and having footwear looked at properly.
Where the underlying cause can be identified and addressed — and in a large share of cases it can be — progression can often be slowed. What we are honest about is that damaged nerve recovers slowly when it recovers at all, so the earlier a neuropathy is worked up, the more there is to protect. We will not promise you a reversal, and you should be careful of anyone who does.
Most neuropathy is worked up at a normal appointment. A few patterns are not. Numbness or weakness that comes on over hours or a couple of days, rather than months, needs urgent assessment — a rapidly ascending weakness that starts in the feet and climbs is treated as an emergency, not a scheduled visit.
Get seen promptly as well for loss of bowel or bladder control, numbness in the groin or inner thighs, weakness in both legs at once, a foot that has begun to drag, or any open wound, ulcer, or area of discoloration on a numb foot. A new one-sided weakness or facial droop is a stroke presentation and needs emergency services, not a clinic.
These are uncommon. They are listed because each one is time-sensitive in a way that ordinary neuropathy is not.
No referral is needed — not for Pain Management, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic or Acupuncture. Our goal is to get you in within the same week.
The visit starts with the pattern: where it began, how it spread, what it feels like, what makes it worse, and what your nights are like. Then an examination — sensation to light touch, vibration and temperature, reflexes, strength, and balance — plus a look at the feet themselves for skin changes, calluses and pressure points. A large part of the value of the first visit is sorting a true peripheral neuropathy from a compressed nerve root, because they look similar to a patient and are managed differently. Blood work and nerve studies are ordered when they would change the plan.
Bring a photo ID and your insurance card, any previous testing or specialist letters, and a full list of what you take, including supplements — some are relevant to nerve health and a few are relevant in the other direction. If an interventional step is appropriate, it is performed in office at Northglenn, north Colorado Springs, Mesa and Glendale, and every other clinic coordinates to one of those. Spine injections are also performed at Lowry on specific days.
Many people describe burning, tingling, numbness, sensitivity, or electric-like pain—often in the feet or hands.
Not exactly. Radiculopathy is nerve root irritation from the spine and often causes radiating symptoms along a specific pattern. Neuropathy often affects more distal areas (feet/hands) and can have different causes.
Sometimes. If symptoms suggest additional evaluation, we can help guide next steps and coordinate with your medical team as appropriate.
Yes. Many people benefit from balance, strength, and mobility work to improve stability and function.
Many patients can reduce symptoms and improve function with a plan that addresses contributing factors and supports daily activity safely.
Often, no. Some insurance plans require a referral or authorization—if you’re unsure, we can help verify.
Sometimes, and sometimes not. Where the nerve is irritated rather than lost, sensation can return as the irritation settles. Where it is damaged, the aim shifts to protecting the foot or hand and managing the pain.
Yes. Early tingling is easier to work with than long-standing numbness, and appointments are usually available within the same week without a referral.
The same care, written for the metro you are in: neuropathy treatment in Denver, neuropathy treatment in Colorado Springs, or neuropathy treatment in Phoenix.
Each page names the clinics in that metro, what the first visit involves, and where an interventional step would be performed if one is needed.
Peripheral neuropathy is treated at every Mountain View Pain Center clinic in Colorado and Arizona — see the full clinic map, Colorado or Arizona.
