Taking Eastern Medicine alongside your prescription
The most common question in the clinic, and the one where a wrong answer does real harm. The short version: you do not stop anything, and you tell both sides everything.
Almost every patient who comes to this clinic is already on something. Metformin, a blood pressure tablet, thyroxine, a statin, insulin. The question they ask, usually near the end of the consultation and often a little nervously, is whether they should stop it.
The answer is no — not on your own
Nothing prescribed to you by your physician should be stopped, reduced or spaced out because you have started something here. Not on the advice of a relative, not because you feel better after three weeks, and not because you read something online. A medicine that is working is often the reason you feel well enough to consider stopping it.
If your readings improve to the point where your prescription genuinely needs revisiting, that is a conversation to have with the physician who wrote it, holding the numbers that show it. Eastern Medicine at this clinic is given alongside conventional treatment, not instead of it.
Why both sides need the full list
Herbal formulations are not inert. Several of the preparations made here carry printed cautions about blood pressure medication, diabetes medication and blood thinners, precisely because they can act in the same direction as those drugs. Two things pushing the same way can push too far.
So the doctor needs your complete list — including the supplements, the things a relative gave you, and the medicine you stopped last month. And your physician needs to know what you have started here. Neither can protect you from an interaction they do not know about.
What to bring so this can be done properly
- Every medicine box you are currently using, not a list from memory
- Anything you stopped in the last few months, and why
- Supplements, vitamins and herbal preparations from anywhere else
- Your most recent laboratory reports
- Any allergy or reaction you have had to a medicine before
Bringing the boxes rather than reciting names matters more than it sounds. Strengths get remembered wrongly, two drugs share a brand name, and the thing described as 'a small white tablet for sugar' could be several different medicines.
Pregnancy, breastfeeding, and the ones to be careful with
A number of the clinic's formulations are not recommended during pregnancy or breastfeeding, and several carry cautions for people with hypertension or on blood thinners. If any of that applies to you, say so before anything is dispensed — it is on the order form and in the consultation for exactly this reason.
This article is about how to combine treatments safely. It is not advice about your particular medicines. Do not change any prescribed dose on the strength of a web page — speak to the clinic, or to the physician who prescribed it.