For decades, the American healthcare system has largely been designed around one central question:
“What medication should we prescribe?”
While medications have undoubtedly saved millions of lives and remain an essential part of modern medicine, many patients eventually find themselves taking multiple prescriptions with little discussion about whether those medications are still necessary—or whether underlying health issues could be improved through lifestyle interventions. That paradigm may be beginning to shift.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced new guidance supporting deprescribing. The guidance clarifies that physicians can now be reimbursed through Medicare for reviewing medications, tapering treatments when appropriate, and helping patients safely discontinue medications that may no longer be necessary. The initiative also encourages healthcare providers to consider non-medication approaches such as nutrition, physical activity, psychotherapy, and other lifestyle interventions when clinically appropriate. (HHS.gov)
This is an important development because it recognizes something many patients—and forward-thinking healthcare providers—have known for years: Sometimes the best prescription is not another medication. Sometimes it’s addressing the root cause.
Deprescribing is the planned and supervised process of reducing or stopping medications that may no longer be necessary, beneficial, or appropriate for a patient’s current health status.
The goal is not to eliminate medications indiscriminately. Many medications are lifesaving and essential. Rather, deprescribing involves asking important questions:
Deprescribing requires careful evaluation and should always be performed under medical supervision. The process is individualized and designed to optimize health while minimizing unnecessary pharmaceutical burden.
Another reason deprescribing has gained attention is the growing prevalence of polypharmacy.
Polypharmacy generally refers to the use of multiple medications simultaneously, often defined as taking five or more prescription medications on a regular basis.
While polypharmacy is sometimes necessary, it can create challenges including:
In many cases, medications are added over time, but rarely reevaluated. A patient may start a blood pressure medication, then receive a cholesterol medication, then a medication for reflux, then another medication to address side effects from the first prescription. Years later, they may be taking a dozen medications without anyone stepping back to ask whether underlying health improvements could reduce that burden. This is where the conversation about deprescribing becomes so valuable.
Historically, the traditional healthcare model excels at diagnosing disease and prescribing treatments.
Acute care medicine has produced incredible advances in treating infections, trauma, heart attacks, and countless other conditions. Pharmaceutical innovation has dramatically improved outcomes for many serious diseases. However, the healthcare system has historically been less effective at addressing the lifestyle factors that drive many chronic illnesses.
In a typical traditional medicine office visit, physicians may have only minutes to evaluate a patient, review symptoms, manage medications, and document care. Writing a prescription is often faster and easier than helping someone overhaul their nutrition, improve sleep quality, develop an exercise program, manage chronic stress, or reduce environmental toxin exposure. As a result, many chronic conditions become managed rather than truly addressed. Patients receive treatment for symptoms while the root causes continue to progress.
Instead, imagine if healthcare providers prescribed healthy behaviors with the same urgency and consistency as medications. This concept is often called a lifestyle prescription. A lifestyle prescription addresses the daily habits that influence health outcomes, including:
Food is information for the body.
Nutrition influences:
For many chronic diseases, and proactive health management, dietary changes can significantly improve biomarkers and overall health.
Sleep is one of the most powerful yet underutilized health interventions.
Poor sleep contributes to:
Optimizing sleep often improves multiple health markers simultaneously.
Movement is medicine.
Regular exercise improves:
Strength training helps preserve muscle mass, which plays a critical role in metabolic health as we age.
Chronic stress affects nearly every system in the body.
Persistent elevations in stress hormones can contribute to:
Learning effective stress-management strategies can produce meaningful health improvements.
Many patients are exposed daily to substances that may negatively influence health, including:
Reducing unnecessary exposures can support overall wellness and metabolic function.
Human beings are biologically wired for connection.
Research consistently shows that strong social relationships are associated with:
A comprehensive health plan should consider social health alongside physical health.
Lifestyle medicine is particularly powerful because many chronic diseases share common root causes and are tightly connected to each other. Treating individual diseases separately without looking at the big picture is problematic and causes the prescribing of multiple medications rather than viewing chronic disease as a suboptimal state of the body that requires a holistic solution. Some of the most common chronic diseases and their connections are outlined below.
Addressing these factors may improve blood pressure naturally.
Lifestyle interventions target the underlying mechanisms driving all of these conditions simultaneously and thus provide a more effective solution with fewer side effects and complications.
Rather than asking, “Which medication treats this symptom?”
Root-cause medicine asks:
“Why is this happening in the first place?”
This approach seeks to identify the underlying drivers of disease rather than simply suppressing symptoms. Root-cause medicine recognizes that chronic illnesses often result from a combination of factors including:
When these underlying issues improve, health often improves as well.
The recent attention on deprescribing reflects principles that MyHealth1st has embraced for years. Our goal has never been simply to manage disease. Our goal is to help patients optimize health. That starts with understanding the individual.
This is why resistance training and adequate protein intake are foundational components of many personalized health plans.
The conversation around deprescribing represents a broader shift in healthcare.
Instead of asking how many medications someone can take, we may increasingly ask: How healthy can we help this person become?
That doesn’t mean medications disappear. It means medications become one tool among many. Nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, environmental health, social connection, and targeted medical therapies can work together to improve outcomes. When health improves sufficiently, some patients may find that fewer medications are needed—always under the guidance of their healthcare team.
That’s a win for patients, providers, and the healthcare system alike.
At MyHealth1st, we believe better health begins with better information. Our comprehensive biomarker assessments help identify hidden drivers of disease, uncover opportunities for optimization, and create personalized plans designed around your unique biology and health goals. If you’re ready to move beyond symptom management and take a root-cause approach to your health, now is the time to start.
Schedule your Comprehensive Biomarker Assessment today and discover what your body has been trying to tell you.
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Dr. Jane Bowser is a certified health coach, nutritionist, and personal trainer, blending academic expertise with a passion for holistic wellness.
