“I don’t want to be on meds forever—how are you so okay with it?”
When I first started posting injection videos, this question came up a lot.
Honestly? After taking RA meds for over two decades, they’ve just become a positive to neutral part of my routine.
I take them because… they work. That’s the simple truth. The benefits of my RA medications vastly outweigh the costs.
I didn’t realize how common medication fear was until I started talking about it online. And I get it—the side effect lists are scary. But here’s what helped me:
RA meds work for most people. Decades of research show they slow joint damage, reduce pain, and improve quality of life (citations: Sparks et al, 2019; Takase-Minegishi et al, 2016).
They’re so effective that it’s now considered unethical to run clinical trials without offering medication to all participants. Why? Because untreated RA is a progressive disease—it can cause permanent joint damage and even affect organs like the heart and lungs.
Do medications work for everyone? No. About 5–20% have difficult-to-treat RA. But fear-based messaging around meds does more harm than good.
For most of us, medication is key to getting our lives back.
And as an occupational therapist and patient educator, of course I also advocate for lifestyle tools—movement, quality sleep, stress management, and nutrition all play an important role. There’s solid evidence that these can help, too.
But for the vast majority of us, they complement medication—they don’t replace it.
Citations below. Let me know what you think👇
Jeffrey A. Sparks. Rheumatoid Arthritis. Ann Intern Med.2019;170:ITC1-ITC16. [Epub 1 January 2019]. doi:10.7326/AITC201901010
Efficacy of biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs: a systematic literature review informing the 2016 update of the EULAR recommendations for the management of rheumatoid arthritis. Nam JL, Takase-Minegishi K, Ramiro S, et al, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases 2017;76:1113-1136.
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