Many people with neuropathy have heard some version of the same message from a doctor: it's just part of getting older, or there's nothing more to be done. Dr. Patrick Sartz, a neuropathy specialist practicing in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area, joined Mark Anthony to make the opposite case — not that neuropathy can be cured, but that it can, in most cases, be meaningfully managed, and that he's rebuilt his entire practice around a treatment patients do themselves, at home.
Sartz didn't start out in medicine. He grew up on a cattle ranch and dryland wheat farm in Eastern Montana, then worked for years as a medical supply salesman before a back injury — and the chiropractic care that helped him recover from it — sent him back to school entirely. He's treated neuropathy patients since 2008 and estimates he's worked with almost 6,000 of them over that time.
Key Takeaways
- Dr. Sartz shifted his entire practice to an at-home infrared light protocol — 20 minutes per limb, five to seven days a week during the healing phase — after finding that in-office treatments worked but didn't last.
- He reports a 98% success rate based on his buyback program: patients who don't improve within six months can return the equipment, and he says fewer than 2% ever have.
- On average, he says patients see a 65 to 100% reduction in symptoms, with most noticing initial improvement within two to three weeks of starting daily treatment.
- Neuropathy has no cure; diabetes is the most common known cause, but he says 30 to 40% of his patients have idiopathic neuropathy, with no identifiable cause.
- Consultations and trial kits are free, and he consults by phone and Zoom with patients across the country — and overseas patients he's never met in person.
A Personal Reason for the Mission
Sartz's own introduction to hands-on care came through a back injury. Still carrying the "farm mentality" from his ranching days, he lifted something he had no business lifting and ended up scheduled for back surgery — stuck at roughly a 60-degree forward angle, with pain running down both legs into his feet. On his uncle's advice, he saw a chiropractor instead and improved enough within days to play through (and lose, but not forfeit) a racquetball match he'd committed to. That night, he decided to change careers entirely: he and his wife, married just three and a half months, sold their house so he could quit his job and go back to school, moving into a mobile home in Davenport, Iowa in the first year of a marriage that has now lasted 44 years.
But the deeper motivation, he said, traces back to his mother. The family believes her neuropathy began after she was drenched by a DDT-based herbicide while spraying their yard in Montana in the 1960s or '70s; the numbness that started in her feet weeks later progressed over the years until she spent the last 16 years of her life confined to a wheelchair, in significant pain. It cost her more than mobility — in the 1970s she was approached to run for lieutenant governor of Montana, seen as a stepping stone toward a possible 1978 U.S. Senate run when Mike Mansfield retired, but had to turn the opportunity down because her neuropathy made it impossible to campaign town to town across the state's small, scattered communities. Sartz's parents passed away in 1999. He didn't find a treatment approach he believed in until 2006, and has been actively treating neuropathy patients since 2008.
Why Every Patient Now Treats Themselves at Home
For years, Sartz ran in-office neuropathy treatments a few days a week. Then he surveyed 200 of his own patients and got a result that reshaped his whole approach: 198 of them reported being as bad as, or worse than, when they'd first walked in — even though each had measurably improved during active treatment. The treatment was working; it just wasn't lasting once it stopped. That finding, combined with a more powerful infrared light device that came on the market in 2019, led him to close in-office treatment entirely and move every patient onto a home protocol instead: 20 minutes per limb, done five to seven days a week during the initial healing phase, tapering to once or twice a week once symptoms stabilize — ongoing, because neuropathy isn't cured, only managed.
"There is no cure for neuropathy at this time. The only thing that we have is treatments, and treatments need to be ongoing."
— Dr. Patrick SartzSartz described neuropathy as a secondary condition — a symptom of something else happening in the body. Diabetes is the most common cause, though he says 30 to 40% of his patients have idiopathic neuropathy, meaning no identifiable cause. He advises patients to watch their carbohydrate and alcohol intake, because elevated blood sugar makes red blood cells "stickier" and less able to release oxygen to nerve endings — the mechanism he believes drives much of the pain. He cited one clear example: a staff member running an in-office treatment day the Friday after Thanksgiving called him at noon to report that every patient who came in that day was worse than usual, regardless of whether their neuropathy was diabetic, chemotherapy-related, or idiopathic.
What the Numbers Look Like
Sartz tracks outcomes through an unusual mechanism: a buyback program. If a patient doesn't improve within six months, he'll buy the infrared unit back. Fewer than 2% of patients have ever taken him up on it, which is the basis for the 98% success rate he cites — "people aren't going to leave money on the table for something that doesn't work," as he put it. On average, he says patients see a 65 to 100% reduction in symptoms, with most people noticing some improvement within two to three weeks of starting daily treatment.
He described two patients by way of example. One, evaluated with the Toronto Clinical Scoring System — a test that compares seven types of sensation in the lower legs and feet against a spot on the face — had zero measurable sensation below the ankle when treatment began. Within weeks, the patient told Sartz he was "pretty much normal from my shoulders down." Another, a retired hiker who'd moved to the Phoenix area from Colorado and had given up hiking because of her neuropathy, later reported hiking two miles down into the Grand Canyon and back up, then walking another four or five miles around the rim. Sartz also mentioned a patient featured on his practice's website who had been taking 15 pills a day for neuropathy and is now off all of them.
Who a Consultation Is For, and What It Costs
Consultations are free, Sartz said, because he doesn't want to charge someone for a "no" — and by his own estimate, he can meaningfully help roughly 90% of the patients who walk into his office. Before anyone commits to a unit, he ships a free trial kit to test whether the treatment is likely to work for that specific patient. None of it is covered by insurance; he described it as a largely self-pay treatment, which is part of why the buyback guarantee matters to him. He now works three days a week in-office — he turns 72 in a few weeks — but stays reachable by phone from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week ("exceptions are church and showers," he said), and consults by phone and Zoom with patients across the country, including seasonal visitors from Canada and patients overseas he's never met in person.
Sartz pointed to a 2015 TED talk by oncologist Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee to explain why he thinks a "pill for every disease" model falls short for neuropathy: of the roughly one million chemical processes happening in the human body, Mukherjee estimated that the entire range of available prescription medications affects only about 250 of them. Sartz's own approach, he said, doesn't try to override the condition chemically — it uses infrared light to stimulate the mitochondria inside nerve cells, and he pointed to NASA-funded research from the 1980s that found infrared exposure could increase a cell's energy output by more than 40%. His analogy: infrared is the cast, not the cure. It doesn't heal the nerve itself — it holds the conditions in place so the body can do that work on its own.
