Dr. Scott Jensen sat across from me in Salt Lake City—measured, candid, and steady. The former Minnesota state senator and family physician is running again for governor in 2026. He speaks like a man who watched the social contract tear and believes it can still be repaired. “The policymakers weren’t up to the task,” he said. “The people we expected to stop the madness didn’t stop it.”
Jensen sees the last half-decade as an inflection point. “Truthfulness, trust, and genuine authenticity,” he said, “have to be the foundation if we want to heal.” That word—heal—matters to him. “I’ve never seen a patient recover without hope,” he said. “With hope, I’ve seen miraculous things.”
His diagnosis for Minnesota’s civic health echoes his physician’s creed: informed consent, limited government, and accountability. “Informed consent is the tool that was most violated,” he said, recalling the executive orders that closed schools and silenced dissent. “We watched policymakers throw mud on the wall to see what would stick—and what stuck were falsehoods.”
He quotes Reagan easily. “Government should protect people from government. When it tries to protect people from people, it’s overstepped.” His campaign themes are the same—restore faith in institutions, lower taxes, and remind citizens that freedom means letting others speak, even when you think they’re wrong. “Freedom of speech isn’t freedom unless both sides have it,” he said.
Minnesota, he warns, has become “the poster child for fraud.” His pledge is to bring competence, accountability, and compassion to governance. “Stay out of my home, my church, my doctor’s office,” he said. “Government is to be limited.” He calls himself a blend of Lincoln’s emancipation, Teddy Roosevelt’s fairness, and Reagan’s faith in family and freedom. “Individual rights are sacrosanct,” he said. “If you want peace, do it through strength.”
The tone shifts now—from policy to physiology, but not from principle. Healing a body and healing a state both require discipline, truth, and balance.
Dr. Ryan Welter, MD and PhD, works in regenerative medicine and longevity. He joined me to translate a mouse study that made headlines: Weightlifting Outperforms Voluntary Wheel Running for Improving Adiposity and Insulin Sensitivity in Obese Mice. The premise sounds clinical; its lesson is universal.
“All exercise is good,” Welter began. “But strength later in life predicts longevity better than cholesterol.” In the study, obese mice were split into groups: sedentary, runners, and “weightlifters” that lifted a lid to reach food. The lifters burned more fat, improved insulin sensitivity, and shed visceral weight faster than the runners. The runners gained endurance and brown fat. The sedentary group, predictably, ballooned.
Then came the kicker: the sedentary mice on a normal diet outlived the rest. “They ate less,” Welter said. “You can over-exercise your way into a metabolic problem if you eat like a king afterward.” Diet still trumps motion.
His advice was precise and grounded. “Do both,” he said. “Two days of cardio, two of resistance. Zone-2 walking, some lifting. Each targets a different system, and together they keep you strong.”
I asked about “minimum viable dose” and social glue—soccer with my kids versus solo gym work. “You’re more likely to walk if you have a dog,” he replied. “Pleasure keeps you consistent.”
By the end, the two doctors—one political, one biological—seemed to rhyme. Jensen warned that when truth decays, so does health. Welter showed that when strength fades, metabolism follows. Both spoke for endurance: one of principle, one of muscle.
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