Donald Trump's Thoughts On Exercise Explain So Much About His Health

In a New Yorker profile, the President of the United States argued that a person is born with a battery-like amount of energy. He further asserted that this finite amount of energy would be wasted on things like working out, which is why he sticks to golf as his only form of exercise. Not only is this understanding of limited and rechargeable energy false, but it also goes against medical studies. 

Medical researchers have found that regular exercise actually increases an individual's energy. Dr. Hope Ricciotti explained the increase in energy to Harvard Health Publishing: "Exertion spurs your body to produce more mitochondria inside your muscle cells. Mitochondria are known as the powerhouses of cells, because they create fuel out of glucose from the food you eat and oxygen from the air you breathe. Having more of them increases your body's energy supply."

Prior to developing this belief, Donald Trump was an athletic student, but he gave up his interest in sports (outside of golf) when graduating. Years later, in a New York Times profile, the future president would make yet another claim that exercising brought more injury than health benefits, saying, "All my friends who work out all the time, they're going for knee replacements, hip replacements – they're a disaster." While his suggestion that exercise creates a chance of physical injury is correct, inactivity offers its own dangers to the body, including increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and osteoporosis. 

Besides routine exercise's ability to strengthen the body and support mental health, the activity can also prevent the development of multiple diseases. As such, the president's approach to working out may give insight into Trump's health. 

Trump was diagnosed in 2025 with chronic venous insufficiency, which causes swelling in the legs and ankles. This condition stems from a difficulty with blood flow returning to the heart from the legs. Specific causes of this condition can be excess weight, blood clots, and high blood pressure, all of which are more likely with a sedentary lifestyle.

Exercise could also help Trump continue to "ace" the cognitive tests that he so frequently brags about. "Our findings suggest that increasing physical activity, even as little as five minutes per day, can reduce dementia risk in older adults," Dr. Amal Wanigatunga and her research team wrote in a 2025 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. 

Trump's misguided views aren't limited to exercise. In January 2026, after much concern over the president's bruised hands, he told The Wall Street Journal that, "They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don't want thick blood pouring through my heart." He further confirmed that he takes a higher-than-normal daily dose of aspirin (325 milligrams versus the recommended 81 milligrams). His pride in the high dose disregards years of medical studies that show the pain reliever has been linked to liver damage, internal bleeding, and stomach ulcers. 

Just months prior, Trump told reporters that he was working to roll back the vaccine schedule for children. During his explanation as to why he was fighting against immunization, he stated that babies were being given needles with over 80 different vaccines inside them. This claim from the President of the United States was proven false and showed a great misunderstanding of the immunization schedule published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a government organization that Trump's cabinet member Robert F. Kennedy Jr. heads as Secretary of Health and Human Services (via CNN).

The president's sharing of unproven or disproven medical claims is nothing new in his political career. In October 2024, he also professed that windmills cause cancer. Medical professionals and prestigious publications have fact-checked Trump since this assertion. Their findings have been unanimous: there is no evidence that the alternative power source causes cancer.