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The Most Under-prescribed Drug in America: Your Dr Won’t Tell You This

I am reading a couple of books and thinking like the authors once again: Good Energy, by Casey Means and Not Done Yet: Strength, Muscle, and Health After 50 by John C. Harris.


Think with me…


Imagine getting up in the morning to headlines that a new drug has been discovered and immediately made available to the public.


Everyone is bonkers. This drug slashes Alzheimer’s risk by 50 percent, reduces the risk of premature death by nearly 70 percent, cuts the odds of developing type 2 diabetes in half, lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke by up to 70 percent, strengthens bones, protects against frailty, and keeps your brain sharp well into old age. The news is dominated by success stories daily. It is the medical breakthrough of the century. Parmacies are overrun for prescriptions.


Ok, stop imagining…and brace yourself for the truth:

This miracle drug is already here. It’s called movement! Walking. Lifting. Carrying. Standing. Climbing stairs. Getting up off the floor. Using your muscles throughout the day.

And, if your Dr. tells you this, they are a rare find! According to Casey Means, fewer than 16 percent of doctors actually prescribe movement to their patients. And 85 percent of medical practitioners report having zero training in how to prescribe exercise in the first place.


There’s a Monster in the Room (and It’s a Chair)


Sitting has become our curse. We sit to work, eat, commute, and relax. Hitting the gym for an hour a few times a week gives us the illusion of safety. But the math works differently.


Even if you hit your target of 180 minutes of moderate cardio per week, sitting for more than five hours a day can erase almost all of those hard-earned health benefits.

Sitting isn’t a neutral act; it’s a metabolic signal of stagnation. If we want to keep our metabolism from the arc of decline, we have to stop looking at exercise as an isolated event and start weaving movement back into the fabric of our daily lives. We need to “sip” exercise throughout our day.


Sipping vs. Chugging


Casey uses an analogy that puts our need to get-up-and-move every hour into perspective.


If your body needs 90 ounces of water a day to stay healthy, you wouldn’t chug all 90 ounces in one thirty-minute burst and then go bone-dry for the next 23 hours. You would sip it throughout the day.


Movement works the same way.


Our bodies don’t just need one heroic burst of exercise; they need frequent muscular contractions. Those “stand up” reminders on your Apple Watch aren’t just annoying nudges—they are metabolic interruptions. They are prompts to “sip” movement so your cells stay “hydrated” with healing power.


Muscle Contraction Is Miraculous Medicine


When we move, we aren’t just burning off lunch; we are signaling our biology. As Means says, “Muscle contraction is miraculous medicine.”


Every time a muscle contracts it wakes up your mitochondria—your cellular power plants—to burn fat, generate energy and initiate healing.


Research shows that resistance training improves blood sugar markers in elderly diabetic patients more effectively than standard care alone. No small thing, we are talking direct intervention in a disease process.


Your Brain on Movement


And the good news doesn’t stop at your waistline. It reaches all the way to your brain.

“Exercise changes your brain chemistry in ways that matter for memory, mood, and whether you recognize your grandchildren in twenty years.” - John C. Harris.

This is not hype. The stress of exercise triggers a hormonal and metabolic cascade that actively protects and repairs brain tissue. People who engage in physical exercise at least three times per week reduce their risk of developing dementia in later years.


We’re not just talking about banking up benefits for a finishing well future. Strenious exercise affects our mood, depression risk, anxiety, self-efficacy, and sleep quality in the near term—not just decades from now.


Movement helps you sleep better tonight and lifts your mood tomorrow. It sharpens your memory this week and protects your brain for the decades ahead.


But Walking Is Not Enough

I follow John on Substack and devour every word he puts out:

“The key phrase in these studies is progressive resistance training. Not walking. Not gentle yoga. Not the light-resistance band circuit your well-meaning doctor might gesture at when they say ‘you should do some exercise.’”

Progressive resistance, we’re talking lifing weights. Challenging your muscles with increasing resistance over time—the kind of training that actually reverses the specific mechanisms of muscle loss rather than just slowing them down.

A new word for most of us: sarcopenia.

Sarcopenia is the age-related loss of muscle mass and strength. This is why old-folks fall, trip, and break bones. Sarcopenic individuals have higher all-cause mortality, higher fall risk, higher rates of metabolic disease, higher rates of disability, and lower quality of life across standardized assessments.

We’re not talking about exercise so we can look good.

“Sarcopenia is one of the primary drivers of nursing home placement. Not cancer. Not heart disease. The inability to function independently driven by muscle loss.” - John C. Harris

Read that again. The thing most likely to rob you of your independence isn’t a dramatic diagnosis. It’s the slow, silent erosion of muscle that happens when we stop challenging our bodies.

Lift Weights. Real Weights.

So what does this mean practically?

“Lift weights. Progressively. Regularly. At least two days a week, ideally three. Not machines-only. Not light resistance bands unless that’s literally all you can do right now. Real resistance training that challenges your muscles to adapt.”- John C. Harris
David Oaks
Farmer’s carry: pick up something heavy (dumbbells, kettlebells) and walk with it. It trains grip strength, core stability, shoulder stability, and the entire muscular system that keeps you upright (thank you John C. Harris).

Steer away from the fancy machines. Why? Free weights require your body to stabilize, balance, and coordinate—skills that translate directly to real life. Machines isolate muscles, which has its place, but they don’t train your body to function as an integrated system.


If you want to carry groceries, pick up grandchildren, get off the floor, or catch yourself when you trip, you need the kind of functional strength that comes from lifting real weight in real space.

Muscle Is Not Vanity. It Is Capacity.


Most folks don’t realize that they are living out their lives inside a story. Every day, even every waking hour, we are living out a story in our minds. Either we are living out the cultural script of the Arc of Decline—that life peaks in midlife and then fades into a long retreat of frailty and “freedom from” work. Or, we are living out the story of the Apex of Meaning—the radical idea that the last quarter of life is when our accumulated wisdom, purpose, and contribution finally converge for their greatest impact.


But to reach that apex, we need a body that can carry us there.


Resistance training and daily movement are not about looking good in a mirror. They are how we invest in the body that carries our future. We aren’t looking for freedom from work; we are looking for the freedom to do the work that finally matters. We cannot mentor, lead, or contribute if we have rehearsed decline so well that our bodies can no longer support our calling.


Strength training can lead to a 40–70 percent reduced risk of stroke, heart attack, or heart disease-related death. It slows cognitive decline by increasing brain blood flow and helping maintain glucose balance.


This isn’t optional. It’s biological necessity.

Stop Rehearsing Decline

Aging is not the enemy. Passivity is. If you tell yourself you are “slowing down,” your body will follow that script. If you want to finish well, you have to reject the narrative of irrelevance. You have to care for the body that carries your future contribution. Movement isn’t just a fitness goal; it’s a daily protest against decay. It’s a declaration that you are not done. The last quarter is not an epilogue. It’s the main event.


Movement is the most powerful medicine available to you, and all it takes to claim it is standing up—and then picking something heavy up off the ground.


Stop rehearsing decline. Start building capacity.




🔒 This week in the paid section:


What I’m learning two weeks into a new resistance routine, the five movement patterns that actually matter after 50, and why I did 20 squats on a Chicago Metra train while strangers watched.


The book in my ear. The weights in my hands. The timer on my phone reminding me to get up.


If you are preparing for the last quarter — not just aging into it — this is the practical stuff.


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