Excuses or Reasons? Here are Reasons.

An older man kayaks ever so slowly down the river, speaking mindfully into the camera about how he knows he's not 22 anymore. How he's not the rower he used to be. Another ad shows an older woman slowly walking up an easy path with a backpack, saying much the same thing.

Both of these ads are part of a $221 million marketing campaign to get you to take a certain medicine to help prevent strokes.

Here's my problem with this. The pharmaceutical and healthcare industry paid out $1.5 billion in 2014 on digital advertising- with nearly $400 of that on mobile marketing- to get you to buy drugs.

Maybe you need them, maybe you don't.

Both of these ads target my age group: Baby Boomers. Their implicit and explicit message is "Hey, you're getting old, you're slowing down, it's okay, take more medicines. We're here to help you get through the process of dying." It's an excuse to rest, sit down, take it easy, life is just soooo hard.

What a load of steaming bullshit, if you will pardon my language, and here's why.

Our bodies love to move. And they love to be worked. The more we move, the more we work, the more the body will give us. Now of course if you have abused, injured or invited terrible disease into your body through various means such as alcoholism or other bad habits, this may not be an easy process. Not impossible, but not easy. Gaining a hundred pounds didn't happen overnight, and losing it is going to take a lot longer. Getting healthy after years of abuse is the same thing.

You think it's impossible? You tell that to my disabled veteran buddy Charlie up in Spokane, who after becoming morbidly obese, and losing two legs, he is in the gym religiously every single day. He has already lost more than 90 lbs, and is becoming a motivational speaker and author to inspire others just like him. Don't tell Charlie it's impossible.

Don't tell that to the 84-year-old woman who, when her husband got Alzheimer's and she couldn't help him around the house, hit the local gym. This tiny woman ended up setting the body building world on fire winning competitions. Don't tell HER it's impossible.

Last year a counselor told me, when I was experiencing some pains, that I was "getting older, my body was deteriorating, I needed to slow way down and rest more." We parted ways. My instincts told me the opposite. My sports chiropractor quintupled my workouts. Quintupled. Because I was also dealing with post concussive syndrome, I began appropriate protocols which shot me right back into high performance mode.

The pain promptly went away. Slow down my putukis.

Pharma ads lull us to sleep, and convince us of one thing: that we have to have their magic potions to survive and have a good life. The simple truth is that the body is full of such potent drugs that are available at any time: drugs like endorphins, which occur when we exercise, and oxytocin, when we love on our animals and each other, which make us feel wonderful and important and valued.

Pharmaceuticals cannot do the job that our own natural bodies can do. If we take too many drugs, we suppress the body's ability to heal itself- and become addicted to substances that we have to purchase.

Which is just fine by Merk, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, AstraZeneca and a lot of other folks. The 11 largest global drug companies made an astonishing $711 billion in profits over the 10 years ending in 2012. And it's going up exponentially, as new emphasis on Hepatitis C means another $4.5 billion. Big pharma is licking its lips.

Here's something we could all do something about RIGHT NOW: The total estimated cost of diagnosed diabetes in 2012 was $245 billion, including $176 billion in direct medical costs and $69 billion in reduced productivity: The American Diabetes Association. According to the ADA, every seventeen seconds another diabetic is diagnosed. The cost? Well, for that person, they'll start out by spending around $15k a year for meds, for the rest of their life. Unless of course Big Pharma has a new CEO who jacks the price up by 600% in the name of capitalism, profits and shareholder value. Ask those folks with kids who count on Epi-pen how they feel about that business model.

My argument, and it's a powerful one, is that for so many of these meds, if we ate and exercised well in the first place we would not need them. Ever. Period.

There are certain medicines I use and am grateful for, because all of us are imperfect. I get migraines, and not a day goes by that I am not intensely glad that someone invented Imitrex. Without it I would be immobilized. So I am not insensitive to the value of certain drugs. I am "user", as it were. However, they slowed down significantly the more I exercised, the less stress and anxiety I had in my life. The more I laughed.

However, when a drug company tries to tell an entire class of folks (Boomers) that it is okay to slow down and move less, that's horse puckey in my book. When an ad tells you that you need a medicine to help your body do what it does naturally, that is a complete lie. Many people are in terrible physical shape because they slowed down and moved less a long time ago. Because they traded out decent natural food for processed garbage and cola drinks. Nearly 70% of adults in America are obese, and one third of our children ages six to 19 are obese. That's a highway to the hell of diabetes, stroke, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, osteoarthritis, gallstones...the list goes on.

Of course, Big Pharma has lots and lots of Very Expensive Medicines to fix all those problems. Right this way. Bring your inheritance.

So NO, you don't need to slow down. You need to speed UP.

As I watched the guy kayak with all the energy of dead armadillo, all I could think of was "for crying out loud, PADDLE!!!!"

You don't need an excuse. You need a reason to get out there and kayak, hike, exercise, and get the pharma monkey off your back.

Here's the natural, pharmacological reason for it: endorphins. The simple term for the body's own version of morphine, which is produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates during exercise, excitement, pain, consumption of spicy food, love and orgasm, and they resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being.

So in other words, the prescription that I infer here is: exercise, get excited (I'll skip the pain part), eat more spicy food, fall in love and HAVE MORE ORGASMS.

Now them there are reasons.

No pharma company ad will tell you THAT.

But I will. Let's get busy.