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When was the last time your doctor or pharmacist suggested that you consider stopping a medication?

It doesn't happen often enough, according to University of Alberta pharmacy researcher Dr. Cheryl Sadowski.

She's a leading Canadian advocate for deprescribing, a growing practice that involves regularly reviewing the medications you're taking and carefully tapering off those deemed redundant or no longer beneficial.

Research by Sadowski and others shows that up to one in four older adults in Canada were taking 10 or more different classes of medication in 2021, even though this type of "polypharmacy" is known to increase the risk of harmful drug interactions eightfold compared with taking two prescribed medications.

"We know that as we age, drug effects and drug tolerance can change, yet we're very slow to take people off medications. That's what we call clinical inertia," Sadowski says. "Then when people have safety issues like falling or confusion, they blame it on aging, but it's really the medication.

"We can do a better job of helping people age safely by only using medicines when there's really no other option."

And it's not only seniors who should be concerned. It can happen to children and adults, too, particularly those with chronic conditions.

In honor of World Pharmacists Day on Sept. 25, Folio asked Sadowski what we all need to know before approaching our health care teams with our own lists of medications.

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