Homeopathy

A lot of what GPs do is to juggle the medication of the elderly. It's not an exact science at the individual level.

The very act of reducing the medication may have had a real effect, just as increasing it later might also have an effect.

Additionally people might find themselves on regimes that were relevant 5-10 years ago, as drugs improve (and they do, fairly constantly) you can always update the regime, a anti-coagulant might be replaced with a better form that removes the previous versions side effects, the drug itself may be less of a chore to take (perhaps a single dose a day rather than 4 set at intervals) - removal of the side effects negates the other drug you were taking to handle these side effects, and the anti-acid you were taking for the second drug becomes redundant . . . . and so on.

We shouldn't be surprised to see medical complex regimes improve with time.