Article

Coming off medication safely

The wish to reduce your medication is understandable. Whether it is possible is always assessed by your own doctor. Your daily life and eating habits, however, are something you can look at today.

In this article, my perspective comes from my own type 2 diabetes diagnosis and the change that followed it. With other illnesses and medications, the situation can be completely different.

A safe way to approach this

In my case, changing my daily life and eating habits eventually led to me getting off my medications.

These are my results. They do not tell you what will happen to anyone else.

If you hope to reduce or stop your own medication, raise it with your doctor. Medication should not be changed on the basis of this article, the coaching or another person's experience.

What you can influence yourself

Although decisions about medication belong to your doctor, you can influence many things in your own daily life: how you eat, how you sleep, how you move and what your relationship with food is like.

Several people who have taken part in my coaching have said that as their relationship with food and their daily habits changed, their energy and how they feel changed too. Some have said they ended up in a situation where their medication could be reduced or stopped altogether.

These are the participants' own experiences, not a promise of what will happen to someone else. If how you feel or your readings change, it is worth telling your doctor. They can assess whether the changes affect your need for medication.

Your relationship with food alongside medication

In the coaching, coming off medication is not set as a goal or promised as an outcome.

Instead, you get to know your own relationship with food: why you eat the way you eat, which situations guide your choices and what happens when you take a short break from certain foods. These are breaks, not permanent bans.

This work can be done alongside medication. If changes in your daily life affect how you feel or your readings, your doctor assesses whether anything in your treatment needs to change.

I tell my own story, from the diagnosis to today, in my change story.

Source: Diabetesliitto: Tyypin 2 diabetes (in Finnish).

A safe way to approach this

What you can influence yourself

Your relationship with food alongside medication

5 things I wish I had heard the day before my type 2 diabetes diagnosis