The Path to Deprescribing: A Second Opinion on Reducing Chronic Medication

The Medication Treadmill] Does your day begin with organizing a handful of pills? Are you managing multiple medications for multiple conditions, each with its own instructions and potential side effects? This is the reality of “polypharmacy,” and it can feel like you’re on a medication treadmill with no end in sight.

You may worry about the long-term effects on your liver and kidneys, the financial burden, or the simple fact that you feel more like a patient than a person. Often, you may even be taking one medication to counteract the side effects of another—a cycle known as the “prescribing cascade.”

What if the goal wasn’t just to manage diseases with more medication, but to restore health so that less medication is needed? What if there was a safe, supervised path to reducing your pill burden?

What is Deprescribing? A Supervised Path to Wellness

Deprescribing is the planned, physician-supervised process of reducing or stopping medications that may no longer be of benefit or may be causing harm.

It is not about abandoning treatment. It is about upgrading your health to the point where the crutch of medication is no longer necessary for a particular condition. It’s a shift from being dependent on pills to being empowered by your own vitality.

NEVER stop or change the dose of any prescribed medication without the direct supervision of your qualified physician. Abruptly stopping certain drugs for blood pressure, heart conditions, or mental health can be dangerous or even life-threatening. The process described here is always conducted under strict medical guidance.

Our Philosophy: Fix the Leak, Don’t Just Mop the Floor

Most chronic medications are excellent “symptom managers.” They effectively lower your blood pressure, blood sugar, or cholesterol. But they do not fix the underlying reason why those numbers are high in the first place.

Using medication without addressing the root cause is like constantly mopping a wet floor instead of fixing the leaky pipe.

Our Clinically Supervised Lifestyle Correction (CSLC CAP) program is designed to find and fix the leak. We focus on reversing the underlying metabolic dysfunction and chronic inflammation that cause the symptoms. When the cause is corrected, the need for the symptom-managing medication naturally decreases.

How Our Supervised Deprescribing Process Works

This is a careful, methodical, and evidence-based journey:

• Comprehensive Assessment: We start with a deep dive into your complete health history, current medications, and advanced biomarker testing to understand the true state of your metabolic and inflammatory health.

• Implementing CSLC CAP: You begin your personalized, structured lifestyle program. This is the core therapeutic work, focused on healing your body from the inside out through nutrition and other lifestyle pillars.

• Monitor & Measure: We regularly track your key health markers—blood pressure, HbA1c, inflammatory markers, weight, etc. This objective data shows us exactly how your body is healing and when it is safe to consider a medication change.

• The Tapering Protocol: As your health markers improve and stabilize naturally, our physicians begin a careful, stepwise process of reducing your medication doses. Each change is deliberate, monitored closely, and done at a pace that is safe for you.

Are You a Candidate for a Deprescribing Second Opinion?

This approach offers new hope if you are:

• Taking multiple medications for metabolic syndrome (e.g., for diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol simultaneously).

• On long-term medication for conditions like Acid reflux (PPIs), Gout, or PCOS, Thyroid, Asthma, Allergy, Arthritis etc.

• Concerned about the cumulative side effects or long-term impact of your prescriptions.

• Feeling that your quality of life is compromised by your medication regimen.

• Motivated to take an active role in your health to achieve a state of genuine wellness, free from dependency on pills.

Unique Advantage Of Second Opinion At Dr Jolly Thomson’s Life Care Centre

• Conventional modern medical treatment protocols are based on the available human trials conducted by developers- the pharmaceutical and surgical instruments industry.

•  Therefore treatment protocols are similar all over the world. Difference in treatment at different treatment centres depends on the infrastructure of the centre and availability of latest equipment and pharmaceutical agents. 

• An unbiased second opinion about a surgical or medical intervention can come only from a treatment centre which is not well aware of all the latest developments but not depending on surgical or pharmaceutical interventions. 

• Universally lifestyle correction is the first line of management for lifestyle diseases. Only when the patient is not able to correct their lifestyle effectively do doctors prescribe medication. But effort for lifestyle correction should be continued along with chronic medication and also after surgical intervention to deal with the co-morbidities of the disease process or side effects of chronic medications.

• Life Care Centre offers scientific and evidence-based treatment approach focussing not on medical or surgical remedies, but concentrating to find the root cause in the patient’s lifestyle and helping out with CSLC CAP – Clinically Supported Lifestyle Correction with cell activation protocol to reverse the disease processes.

Unique Advantage Of CSLC CAP

• Most lifestyle diseases coexist and patients will have more than one disease or many diseases and discomforts. In conventional medical treatment protocol, lifestyle diseases are seen and treated separately by concerned specialists with specific medications for that particular disease condition or surgical interventions focussing on symptomatic relief.

• In CSLC CAP the first step is on identifying the root cause in current lifestyle. Then focusing on  eliminating the causative factors and helping to provide an enabling environment for repair of the body at cellular level by ensuring optimal nutrition, activity and minimizing toxin. Therefore CSLC CAP practice addresses all the lifestyle associated health issues simultaneously and gets relief for all health issues through a single protocol. 

• With CSLC CAP support most of the patients are able to come out of most of the medications for lifestyle diseases like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, arthritis, allergy, liver kidney diseases etc within a month.

Limitations Of CSLC CAP

• Willingness of the patient to make changes in lifestyle including food habits and activity pattern and invest time and resources for the purpose is essential. In CSLC CAP a patient is an active participant in treatment not just an on looker as in other conventional medical systems.

• The mental and physical ability of the patient to understand and do mild to moderate physical activity in lying and sitting position is essential.

• Children below 10 years are not generally suitable for CSLC CAP.

• Minors below 18 years if joining CSLC CAP at least one parent should also join the program and understand, support and guide the child.

• Patients with severe hearing, visual, mental impairment if joining CSLC CAP, one of the close family members who is residing with the patient and taking care of the patient should also join, learn and practice the program to fully understand and support the patient.

• Those with severe deformities, movement restriction, failure of multiple organs etc are not suitable for CSLC CAP.

• In case of organ failure success depends on the stage of the organ failure and the ability of the patient’s immune system for repair.

• Support of the close family members and friends, especially those staying with the patients has a major impact on the success of the treatment.

• The speed and extent of relief depends on the body’s ability to repair and the willingness and efforts of the patient to practice CAP principles.
• Even after the correction of body and blood parameters and tapering of medication, practicing the CAP principles and maintaining body and blood parameters are crucial for maintaining health.