A while ago, I read an article about people who specialize in weaning other folks off of medications used to treat a condition or condition. This growing trend is a backlash against things prescribed long ago that may not be needed anymore or have no benefit. In my age group, I am seeing more people with the daily pill box that they have made part of their lifestyles. Along with the multiple pills are multiple specialists, increased healthcare costs, and more unintended side effects that may cause more harm than good. Worse, some of the medications, such as those used for hot flashes known as SSRI’s have long withdrawal processes of weeks, months, or years, and doctors simply tell their patients to stay on them even at small doses to prevent the withdrawal. Worse, patients are never told about the difficulty getting off the drugs, and lay people are now helping others to do what their doctors will not, which is help them to withdraw. Perhaps the pill culture, which has been normalized in the USA, needed this moment. The medications drive healthcare costs, sometimes interact with other medications, which can land you in the hospital, which happened to my dad several years ago. What are we doing? How did we get here, and is this healthcare or are we just creating dependence, which drives healthcare costs but often makes us less healthy? Polypharmacy, which is the ingestion of 5 or more drugs, results in poorer outcomes. Deprescribing antihypertensive medication was associated with less cognitive decline, particularly among those with dementia. Maybe doctors need to be more ready to deprescribe as well. It is often the elderly who are overmedicated. I have a friend whose blood pressure had gone up significantly, and it became a medical emergency. His father was a physician and had him go to different specialists. He was taking blood pressure meds, statins, and many other meds, and felt terrible. One day, he decided to stop all of the medications for a week. His blood pressure returned to normal, he had more energy after no longer taking the statins, and was now medication-free. I have seen senior citizens who seem to be less mentally with it come alive when many of the medications are removed. I often find myself talking with patients about simplifying their prescriptions, although ultimately, you should discuss this with the prescribing doctor. I also advise patients to use one pharmacy so their pharmacist can assess whether there are medications that are in conflict with other medications. They know medications better than most doctors. An article that was published in Dynamic Chiropractic goes into further detail on this, but all drugs have side effects, and in many other countries, they take far fewer medications than Americans and are overall healthier. Check out the article below from Dynamic Chiropractic Deprescribing – It’s a Thing