Health Library / Lifestyle
This content is for education only and is not medical advice. I'm a fitness coach, not a physician. Talk to your doctor before starting any medication, hormone, supplement, or new exercise program, especially if you have a medical condition or take prescriptions.
By 55, a lot of people are on at least one prescription. Several of the most common ones change how your body responds to training, and almost nobody connects the two — they just think they've gotten old.
I want to be extremely clear about the frame here, because this is the module most likely to be misread: nothing below is a reason to stop taking anything. These medications are prescribed because the condition they treat is worse than the side effect. What this is for is recognising an effect, so you can raise it with your prescriber and so you stop blaming yourself.
The most common one, and the most common complaint: muscle aches.
The honest picture is genuinely interesting. In blinded trials, where nobody knew who was taking the statin, muscle symptom rates were close to identical between the drug and placebo groups. Some of the best studies did something clever — people who'd previously stopped statins because of muscle pain were given alternating months of statin and placebo, and reported similar symptoms in both.
That doesn't mean your muscle pain is imaginary. Real statin muscle injury exists and is measurable. It means the effect is far less common than the internet suggests, and that expecting it makes it likelier to be noticed.
What matters practically: if your muscles ache on a statin, that's a
conversation, not a decision. There are several statins, they differ, doses differ, and most people who genuinely can't tolerate one do fine on another. Stopping without telling anyone is the thing that actually costs people, because the cardiovascular protection is real.
Training on them is fine and encouraged. If new, unusual muscle pain arrives — particularly severe, widespread, or with dark urine — that's a call to your doctor, not a thing to train through.
These blunt your heart rate response. That's the mechanism, not a side effect.
Which breaks every heart-rate-based training tool you own. Your Zone 2 number is wrong. Your max is wrong. Your watch's zones are wrong. People on beta blockers get told to train at a heart rate they physically cannot reach and conclude they're unfit.
The workaround is straightforward: train by effort, not by heart rate. The talk test still works — conversational pace is conversational pace regardless of what your pulse is doing. Rating your exertion on a simple scale works. Your watch does not.
You may also fatigue sooner and feel less "up" for training. Worth knowing rather than interpreting as decline.
Covered in its own module, and it belongs here too. A trial in older adults found the metformin group gained less muscle from resistance training than placebo. If you're on metformin and training and the results seem thin, that's a known possibility and worth raising.
Not a reason to stop. A reason to know.
Common in this bracket, and two effects come up constantly.
Weight change — some are associated with gain, and it varies a lot by drug and person. If the scale moved after starting one, that's a real possibility rather than a willpower failure.
Sexual side effects are frequent and frequently unmentioned, because people are embarrassed and doctors don't always ask. There are often alternatives. You have to say it out loud for that to happen.
Also worth knowing: SSRIs interact with methylene blue, which turns up in the biohacking world, and the interaction risk is serotonin syndrome — genuinely dangerous. If you're on an antidepressant, that's one to raise before trying anything from a longevity menu.
Diuretics affect fluid and electrolytes, which matters for training in heat — relevant here. Some cause dizziness on standing, which is worth respecting when you sit up fast from a bench.
And several classes affect exercise tolerance in ways that are individual. Tell your prescriber you lift and ask specifically what applies.
Longer-term use works against muscle and against bone, both directly. People on them for autoimmune conditions or asthma are often fighting a headwind they don't know about. That's a strong argument for resistance training, not against it.
Getting it right transforms energy and training capacity. Getting it wrong in either direction affects weight, heart rate, temperature and recovery. Levels get rechecked periodically for a reason, and if you feel off, that's worth a test rather than a guess.
Bruising and bleeding risk changes what's sensible around contact and fall risk. And high-dose fish oil matters here — it's one of the more common supplement interactions and one people don't report because they don't think of fish oil as a drug.
Tell your prescriber you train. Specifically. "I lift weights twice a week and do cardio" gets a more useful answer than "I exercise."
Bring the whole list, supplements included, to every appointment. Creatine, fish oil, vitamin D, whatever's in the cupboard. Your pharmacist will check interactions for free and doesn't need an appointment — that's the single most underused resource in this entire library.
Report side effects rather than absorbing them. Most have alternatives. Nobody finds out about the alternative if you don't mention the problem.
Never adjust anything yourself. Not the dose, not the timing, not skipping it before a workout. If the medication is genuinely interfering with something that matters to you, that's a legitimate thing to raise and a good prescriber will work with you on it.
The goal isn't fewer medications. It's training well on the ones you need.
Last updated September 30, 2026