No, stopping medication should only be done with the guidance of your GP, or other prescribing healthcare practitioner. Medication is doing a job, and stopping some medications needs to be done with a gradual tailoring off approach. If you want to explore coming off any medication you must do it under their supervision.

Again, this would need to be done after discussion and with monitoring from your GP or other prescribing practitioner. Some nutrients can have ‘drug sparing’ interactions, for example magnesium may lower blood pressure, which if combined with blood pressure lowering medication may cause the blood pressure to lower too much, causing dizziness. In this case you could discuss this with your GP, and with monitoring of your blood pressure, it may be that they would consider lowering your medication dose. This must be done though under their supervision.

Some nutrients can bind to medication, making both less available to be absorbed. The best advice is to take them at least 4 hours apart to maximise the effectiveness of both.

Increasing nutrient dense foods in the diet is always the first port of call to ensure good nutrient status, so, yes, we would advocate this approach. If you have been on medication for a long time, or your diet is not as ideal as you would like then supplementing can be an excellent way to improve nutrient status.

Your GP can test for some nutrients like vitamin B12, folic acid/folate, and vitamin D, so if you suspect you might be low in these, speak to them about the possibility of testing with a blood test. Many nutrients are actually hard to test for, so often the best indicator is if you feel you have some of the deficiency symptoms. If your medication is not contraindicated with the nutrients in question, try increasing in your diet, or with supplementation and see how you feel.

This can depend on your medication, your diet, and you as an individual. Many factors can increase our need for nutrients, like stress. If you take medication for short periods of a few days to a week or two, it is less likely deficiency will occur. However, if you have taken medication for longer or ongoing periods, or you take several medications which deplete the same nutrients the risk is increased. In this instance you may wish to supplement on an ongoing basis, or at least until your levels return to within typical parameters if tested.

Blood thinning medication can be difficult to combine with some nutrients which may affect the way your blood clots, causing medication to be less or more effective. If you are taking blood thinning medication, we suggest you speak with your GP if you have any concerns about potential nutrient deficiency or wish to take any supplements.

We have included medications based on current research information available. Not all medications deplete nutrients, so if yours is a commonly prescribed medication and not listed, there is no evidence to show it depletes nutrients (aside from blood thinning medications – see question above).

Your pharmacist is a good person to speak with regarding medication and nutrient deficiency. You can also contact our expert Nutrition Advisors who can give you advice but be prepared that they might also ask you to refer to your GP or Pharmacist.

Likely yes, you might need to take over and above the 400iu currently recommend by health experts, especially during winter months. The upper tolerable or safe intake for vitamin D is set at 4000iu in the UK, so always stay well below this level though. More is not always better!

This a difficult to question to answer as it will depend on many factors and will be individual to the person. One of the best places to start would be to take a multivitamin and mineral which provides smaller levels of numerous nutrients (aside from calcium and magnesium) and see how you get on for several months. If you need advice on which supplements would be most suitable for you, head into your local independent health store who have a wealth of advice.

Contact our Nutrition Advisors via our webchat, email on phone on our contact page. We use the Gold Standard Industry Database for checking potential interactions and can flag these up for you and give you some advice on whether to proceed or whether you need to check further with your GP before taking.