Link: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/04/gp-doctor-medication-de-prescribing

De-prescribing refers to a structured, supervised process of stopping medications that are no longer necessary or beneficial. Ask your doctor the following questions:

• What is this medication for? Do I still need it?

• What would happen if I stopped it? Is there a safe way to stop?

Why you should know this

A supervised process of stopping medications that are no longer needed is something everyone should know about

What in the holistic medicine is this advice?

Im not sure if this is a us thing but often times changes in insurance and other thins causes changes in doctors and generally things that get prescribed before get carried forward or maybe they get changed for new ones that work a bit different and each one is for one symptom. Then you get medications prescribed for side effects. You can eventually get this hodge podge where different medications are interfering with each other and its a big mess. Unfortunately if you in the us getting it properly sorted is pretty hard to. In my dads case he was put in the hostpital where is vitals could be constantly monitored and they took him off everything and then kinda started from the start on his biggest issues with the best options. I think they even tried a few to see which had the last side effects for him. Then they sorta built it back up to where he had a decent as possible quality of life on as few as sorta possible with a minimum of a medication cover the side effects of another medicine. He had to be in the hospital for pretty long. Like many weeks. To get it all sorted.

Oh you would be surprised. I'll ask my patients what meds they're on and they'll tell me they take a lot but they don't know the names. I'll ask if they can tell me any of the medical conditions they take meds for and they can't. A surprisingly large amount of people are shockingly willfully ignorant about their own medical problems (and then wonder why they only get worse)

Paragraphs my dude

Keep the fun ones on retainer. They're good for running thru and nothaving to be around another 29 days

You would be surprised.

I’ve known plenty of older folks that simply take what is prescribed to them, to the point where half of what they’re taking is simply side effect management/masking for the other half.

Plenty of Drs seem to have a mental flowchart of meds as solutions to the problems meds cause.

Note: this is not absolute; not all medical professionals are like this and not all meds are necessarily harmful.

Even weirder in my experience is doctors trying to pull you off medication you need for no reason at all. They seem to do these reviews and then suggest diabetics come off their insulin and I can not work out what the heck they think they are doing, its getting people hurt or killed if they don't stand up to them.

Having come off a medication, eventually had a bad time, and then had to go back on some sort of medication again, I can say that both you and your doctor can be fooled into thinking that you're doing fine without them. Even when you take that knowledge into account.

Be sure to bear that in mind when you stop taking things.

Laughs in chronic illness.

If you have a doctor that prescribes medicin without you needing it, get a new doctor instead.

This sounds more like someone taking meds for blood pressure and thinking they're no longer needed because their blood pressure is fine now

Unless you take like 20 meds I cannot imagine someone taking something and not understanding what its for and why you are taking it

Yep lmao each medication I take is for a different inherent condition (i.e., not side effect management) and cannot be stopped without me losing ability to function in a serious way.

This reads as woowoo MAHA med-shaming bullshit to be honest.

This is not an uncommon amount, my relative takes 15-20 twice a day. Some variance across the doses.

Most recently they had a huge review for just this purpose while looking to rsolvea new issue and it took some work but they are more active and healthy than they have been in 15 years.

Oh we're just going MAHA now?

Today RFK jr announced a war on antidepressants, which includes very similar language about "getting people off unnecessary prescriptions." That's what.

Okay, my point still stands

i take it you live in some mystical land with a functioning health care system