Been Told RA Means a Lifetime of Drugs, Pain, and Deformity? That’s Nonsense.
Google rheumatoid arthritis and the message is grim: you’re doomed to a life of pain and deformity, so start buying drugs that slowly wreck the rest of your health, because there’s nothing else you can do. After 35 years of practice, I can tell you plainly — that’s a bunch of nonsense.
There is a great deal you can do that won’t slowly kill you — and in many cases, finding and removing what triggered your RA changes everything. That’s what functional medicine is for.
If You’ve Just Been Diagnosed, Please Don’t Listen to the Doom
A diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis usually comes with a script and a verdict: this is chronic, it’s downhill from here, and the plan is medication for the rest of your life. Those drugs have a role — controlling inflammation early genuinely protects your joints. But they answer only half the question. They manage the fire. They don’t tell you what lit it.
Here’s the part almost no one gets told: nobody is born with RA. Even children with juvenile RA usually had a normal immune system first — and many of them outgrow it. Something in the body changed. Functional medicine is built around one question conventional care rarely asks: what changed, and can we change it back?
What a Functional Medicine Approach to RA Actually Means
Functional medicine isn’t about “treating RA.” It’s about figuring out what went wrong in your body to cause it — because until you know that, you’re only chasing symptoms. Rheumatoid arthritis is what’s called an autoimmune disease: the immune system, which is supposed to attack invaders, starts attacking your own joints instead. The real question is what flipped that switch.
Over 35 years I’ve found that RA rarely comes out of nowhere. There’s almost always a trigger — often more than one — quietly driving the immune system to misfire. Find the trigger, remove it, and in many cases the immune system can stand down. Here are the ones I look for first.
The Triggers Behind Rheumatoid Arthritis
The research linking infections in the intestinal tract to RA is deep and long-standing. Specific gut bacteria can trigger the immune changes that drive rheumatoid disease — and this connection is so well documented it’s remarkable it isn’t common knowledge. This is the single most important place I look. Read the full story of the gut bacteria and genes behind RA ›
Here’s the big takeaway: anything that can cause a leaky gut can potentially trigger rheumatoid arthritis, and the link is well documented. A damaged intestinal lining lets things into the bloodstream that don’t belong there, and the immune system reacts. I test for it, and if it’s damaged, we repair it. What leaky gut is and why it matters ›
Mycoplasmas are the smallest bacteria there are, and they can infect almost any cell — causing everything from respiratory trouble to chronic fatigue to RA. Research has tied them to rheumatoid arthritis as far back as 1939. They’re a frequent co-infection with Lyme, and like Lyme they can be tricky to catch: a negative test doesn’t fully rule them out.
The bacteria behind gum disease can also trigger RA, and periodontitis is well linked to it. A root canal can be part of the picture too: because the tooth is dead and has no blood flow, bacteria can hide safely in its tiny tubules, set up headquarters, and cause trouble elsewhere in the body. If you have RA, take excellent care of your teeth — and sometimes a problem tooth is worth a second look.
Common viruses — Epstein-Barr, cytomegalovirus, even the herpes family — are suspected triggers of RA. The good news is these are usually straightforward to identify with blood testing, so we can see whether one of them is part of your picture.
Plenty of people carry one of these triggers and never develop RA. Why? The best answer we have is genetics — certain genetic types develop rheumatoid arthritis in response to these triggers, and others don’t. That’s why the same infection floors one person and not another, and why testing matters so much.
The Trigger Dictates the Treatment
This is the part I love. Functional medicine doesn’t force people into cookie-cutter protocols. The particular trigger — or triggers — behind your RA dictates your treatment. That’s why the testing comes first: proper stool analysis, gut and leaky-gut testing, infection and nutrient panels. Find what’s driving the immune system, and the plan writes itself.
If you’ve been told there’s nothing to do but take a pile of drugs, I want you to know there’s hope — and a real path to work on this.
Finding and fixing a root cause takes time. Meanwhile, you’re in pain now — so alongside the detective work, I use two of the most powerful non-drug anti-inflammatory tools I’ve found in 35 years to help you feel better while we work.
“In 35 years I’ve used just about every therapy there is for an inflamed joint. I’ve never found anything more anti-inflammatory than hyperbaric oxygen and red light used together.”
An inflamed RA joint is starved of oxygen, and that low-oxygen state feeds the inflammation. Hyperbaric oxygen floods the tissue with oxygen under pressure, calming the inflammatory drive and supporting repair.
Red and near-infrared light works on the joint’s cells directly — lowering the inflammatory signaling that drives RA, easing pain and morning stiffness, and powering the mitochondria that let cells repair.
Learn more about our hyperbaric oxygen & red light therapy ›
Newly Diagnosed. Not Ready to Just Wait. A Different Starting Point.
A real patient story from our Phoenix clinic. Name changed to protect privacy.
When “Sarah,” 47, was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, she faced the decision so many newly diagnosed patients struggle with. Her rheumatologist recommended starting long-term medication right away. She understood why controlling the inflammation mattered — but she wasn’t ready to commit to lifelong medication without first exploring every option. She wasn’t looking for a miracle cure. She was looking for hope, and for something that might help her feel better while she considered her next steps.
She started with hyperbaric oxygen and red light therapy for the pain and stiffness. Within several weeks, the changes were real — morning stiffness got shorter, her hands were less swollen, walking got easier, and she reached for over-the-counter pain relievers far less often. For the first time since her diagnosis, she felt she had some control back.
As Sarah improved, she wanted to know why she’d developed RA. We evaluated the factors known to drive autoimmune inflammation — intestinal permeability, the gut microbiome, chronic infections, nutrient status, vitamin D, oxidative stress, blood sugar, and more — and testing pointed to several areas worth correcting. Her plan focused on those, through personalized nutrition, targeted supplementation, gut restoration, and ongoing monitoring. Over the following months, her pain, energy, and mobility kept improving.
This describes one patient’s experience; individual results vary. Rheumatoid arthritis is a serious autoimmune disease that can cause permanent joint damage if inflammation is not adequately controlled. Hyperbaric oxygen and red light therapy are used here as supportive, off-label care — not a cure for RA. Never start, stop, or change prescribed medication except in coordination with your treating physician.
Who This Helps — and Who It Won’t
What Our Patients Say
4.9 stars across 200+ Google reviews
“I feel wonderful — better every time we peel a new layer off the onion of issues I’ve had. There’s still progress to be made, but for the first time since being diagnosed with RA at 27 (I just turned 50), I truly feel I’m on the right path.”
“Darrell really gets to the root of the problem. Unlike a lot of doctors, he doesn’t just throw prescriptions at issues. He will test and test — digging for the cause and then working on fixing the issue. He and his staff are professional, courteous, and a joy to be around.”
Testimonials reflect individual patient experiences and are not a promise or guarantee of any particular result. Individual results vary. Never start, stop, or change prescribed medication except in coordination with your treating physician. Excerpts are from public reviews, edited only for length.
Questions People Ask Us
No. Functional medicine works alongside your existing care, and we don’t advise stopping prescribed treatment. Our aim is to find and address what’s driving your RA while you and your physician manage the disease. Any changes to medication are a conversation for you and your prescribing doctor.
It depends on your picture, but a comprehensive stool analysis is one of the most important tests in RA — it often identifies the offending pathogen and what will clear it. We also test for leaky gut, hidden infections, nutrient status, and other drivers of immune dysfunction. The testing is what lets us build a plan around your actual triggers instead of guessing.
No. The functional medicine evaluation — the testing and root-cause work — can be done by telehealth from anywhere in the country. Hyperbaric oxygen and red light therapy are hands-on and done at our Phoenix clinic, so those are for local patients; if you’re not local, we still help you look for what’s driving your RA.
I’ll be honest rather than sell you a promise. RA is serious and it varies from person to person. What I can say from experience is that when we find and remove the trigger driving the immune system — a gut infection, leaky gut, a hidden pathogen — the immune system can often stand down, and some patients improve dramatically. The only way to know what’s possible for you is to test and find out.
You Are Not Cursed to a Lifetime of Pain and Drugs
If you’ve been told there’s nothing to do but take a pile of medication, take the initiative and get started with a good functional medicine workup. Let’s find out what triggered your RA — and what we can do about it. Available in Phoenix and nationwide by telehealth.
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