Mobility is Medicine
The idea that the Pharmaceutical industry is motivated by profit rather than promoting human health is far from new, in fact quite the opposite. It has been long pointed out that, while Americans spend around $603 billion on prescription drugs in 2021 alone, a figure that climbs 8% annually, health outcomes have stagnated or even declined for years.
So, while we have never spent more on prescription drugs, and are bound to spend even more in the future, our health has either not improved at all, or got worse, which raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the medicine we’ve been taking and the system that delivers it to us.
However, if prescription medicine is failing us, we must ask ourselves what would better fit its place, and in this article, we’ll talk about how our body can heal itself through one of its most essential functions: movement.
Conditioned to Consume
Now, if we know that pharmaceutical companies can’t be trusted, why do we still give our money to them and act as if there is no other alternative? The answer is conditioning. The entire medical-industrial complex operates under the premise that health solutions are always bought. This goes for everything from a simple headache to the most complex conditions and even health insurance.
This mentality is broadcast across the culture through the most diverse means. In 2020 alone, pharmaceutical advertising reached $6.58 billion dollars, making prescription drugs one of the most advertised products in America.
It doesn’t matter if you have the common cold, or are managing more debilitating illnesses like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, chronic arthritis, or are currently recovering from a stroke. In fact, the worse and the more permanent the illness the better for the pharmaceutical industry because that means they’ll have a long-term consumer.
The system creates incentives where insurance reimbursement favors billable interventions over lifestyle counseling, and healthcare providers face pressure to see more patients in less time. The result is that patients are sold a narrative centered around managing illness instead of building health, one where the patient’s quality of life is contingent on how much they spend, and tools like movement aids get framed as mere accommodations.
The end result is that patients have to watch their health continue to decline, all the while their medical expenses increase, which directly translates to a better bottom line for the companies profiting from this model.
This is why for people managing conditions that have impaired their movement and made them captive consumers to a multi-billion dollar industry, becoming healthy begins not with one treatment or another, but with an inner journey.
You will have to take the necessary steps to decondition yourself from believing that you will be living on pills for the rest of your life, and that without them you will never live pain free again. The first step is awareness, recognizing what you’ve been taught to believe and deciding whether to continue following it.
Healing through Movement
A perfect example of things that often go unmentioned in standard medical appointments is the role that movement plays in recovery. Yes, recovery.
It has been proven by research published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience that the brain retains its capacity to reorganize itself (which is called brain plasticity) throughout a person’s life, and that it can be stimulated to do so through movement.
The principle goes like this: whenever we repeat an activity often enough, our brain reacts by strengthening neural connections and producing larger quantities of something called “brain-derived neurotrophic factor”, a protein that stimulates the growth of new neurons and synapses.
When the activity in question involves movement, especially if it requires balance and coordination, the demand for the brain to create these new neural pathways is even greater and the change more radical.
So, for someone that’s recovering from a stroke, for example, doing regular exercise that focuses on improving balance and coordination will force your brain to rebuild itself, healing much of the damage caused by the stroke.
The importance of a discovery like this can’t be overstated. For people that have had their movement impaired by neurological conditions or any other form of illness, it means that they can raise their quality of life by building their health back up.
And yet, this possibility is often sidelined by health professionals that would rather focus on managing their patient’s decline with drugs. And so, movement aids like the Alinker are relegated to mere accommodations.
The Alinker
Your first look at the Alinker might make you think it doesn’t look like medical equipment, and that’s the whole point. It was designed by Barbara Elisabeth, after her mother rejected a traditional walker because it was “for old people”.
This led her to create a movement aid that’s more similar to a three-wheeled, bright yellow walking bike which has no pedals and is propelled by the user’s legs only while they are seated.
Instead of leaning over a walker that you have to slowly push forwards while hunched over and with your eyes down, you sit at eye level with the world, propelling yourself with your own strength while also training your balance and coordination.
This is what BE calls “human centered design” where you start from the person, rather than from the condition itself, something that has recently been backed up by research as well.
In 2025, Stanford University’s Joint Replacement Clinic collaborated with The Alinker on research led by Dr. Derek Amanatullah. In May 2025, a study in collaboration with Stanford released their findings, which showed significant cost savings for people managing chronic illness and mobility challenges.
According to the information released, users were “less likely to incur expensive medical expenses related to further health decline, increased medications, fall prevention, avoiding surgeries, physical therapy, rehabilitation, and other treatments for mobility issues.”
The reason why the Alinker had such an effect is quite simple: by promoting constant physical activity, the aid stimulated neuroplasticity, helping users avoid the worsening of symptoms that usually follow reduced mobility. So instead of managing their decline with more and more expensive medicine, they used movement to build up their capacities, which has allowed them to experience even greater freedom.
The Alinker costs approximately $2,830, roughly what someone managing a chronic condition might spend on pharmaceuticals and physical therapy in just two to three months. But unlike those recurring costs, users report saving tens of thousands of dollars in medical expenses over the years that follow, not because they’ve abandoned medical care, but because they’ve built capacity that makes many interventions unnecessary.
For example, a user by the name of Sarah who was living with MS now routinely does 5K runs. Not 5K walks. Runs. On an Alinker, propelled by legs that doctors had written off as declining assets.
Graham Lewis, another user, found restored independence that allowed him to participate in outings again, while Selma Blair, an actress and MS advocate, described it as a game-changer: “Able to keep up with my son on a walk while activating my brain without overstressing my body.”
Reclaiming the Journey
Becoming healthy is an inner journey because it begins with questioning what you’ve been taught to believe. For years, the message has been clear: managing chronic illness means accepting decline and buying interventions to slow it down. Pills for pain. Physical therapy for weakness. More appointments, more prescriptions, more dependency.
The first step in reclaiming your health is recognizing this conditioning for what it is and deciding whether to continue following it.
The Alinker represents a different choice. Not a rejection of medical care, but a refusal to accept that pharmaceutical management is the only path forward. More than 5,000 people worldwide have chosen this path, and their stories tell the same truth: when you give your body the conditions it needs through movement, challenge, and engagement, it responds by rebuilding what you thought was lost.
The Stanford research confirmed what users already knew: their medical trajectories didn’t just plateau. They reversed. The downward spiral became an upward climb toward strength, independence, and the ability to participate in life again rather than watch it from the sidelines.
“Movement is medicine,” BE Alink emphasizes. Not a metaphor. Not alternative therapy. A biological reality that the medical-industrial complex has little incentive to acknowledge because it can’t be packaged, prescribed, and renewed monthly.
Your body can heal itself when given the right conditions. The question isn’t whether it’s possible—thousands of Alinker users have already proven it is. The question is whether you’re ready to stop being a consumer of health management and start being a creator of your own recovery.
Why listen to a medical model that prescribes medications before asking what you eat and how much you move? Why accept the premise that declining health is inevitable when research shows the brain can reorganize and strengthen throughout life?
The inner journey begins with awareness. With recognizing that you’ve been conditioned to consume solutions rather than build capacity. With understanding that the first and most important choice is deciding whether to continue down the path of managed decline or to start climbing toward restored strength.
The choice is yours. The capacity is already within you. The question is simply whether you’re ready to activate it.
About The Alinker: The Alinker is a three-wheeled walking bike designed to keep people active, mobile, and socially engaged. Founded by Barbara Elisabeth (BE) Alink and backed by Stanford University research, the company partners with users worldwide who’ve chosen movement as medicine. Learn more at thealinker.com or join the Alinker community to hear stories from people who’ve transformed their health through the inner journey of rebuilding rather than managing.
