TimmyH
Forget Exercise, Take Drugs
August 6th 2008 04:17
A new scientific breakthrough could mean that a pill to mimic exercise is one step closer. Researchers have discovered two compounds that boost endurance in mice by changing the metabolic properties of the animals’ muscles. The most dramatic benefits were witnessed in conjunction with some level of exercise with some results preventing the onset time of fatigue by some 75 percent.
Previous research from the Salk Institute in California was able to genetically engineer so called “marathon mice” which were able to run twice the distance of their non-engineered counter parts by triggering a gene known as PPAR8;. The team, led by Ronald Evans has now been able to reproduce the same effect through drug stimulation.
The research, published in the Cell Journal indicates that running endurance can be increased by more than 50%. "It's tricking the muscle into believing it's been exercised daily," said Evans. "It proves you can have a pharmacological equivalent to exercise."
The drugs don’t follow the same pattern of performance as was previously achieved through anabolic steroids which increased muscle size but not endurance. If human trials get underway soon, the drugs could prove to be a new way to induce the health benefits of exercise.
"Why don't people exercise when they know it's good for them? Because it's hard; you feel fatigued," says William Evans, director of the Nutrition, Metabolism, and Exercise Laboratory at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in Little Rock. "Perhaps a product like this might help people who have a hard time initiating an exercise program."
Endurance training, which triggers a genetic change that causes muscle metabolism to produce more slow-twitch fibres, burns fat and increases endurance. "It looks like they've been able to make fast muscle fibres act more like slow muscle fibres, which have a greater capacity to use fats as fuel," says William Evans.
As yet, it is unknown whether the drugs will have the same effect on humans.
If they do, William Evans says the compounds might be most useful for someone "who needs to lose a lot of weight or who is at risk of diabetes. It may make doing regular submaximal endurance exercise seem easier to people who don't do exercise." However, he says, "if, as I suspect, people look at it as a substitute for exercise, that would be bad news indeed."
Previous research from the Salk Institute in California was able to genetically engineer so called “marathon mice” which were able to run twice the distance of their non-engineered counter parts by triggering a gene known as PPAR8;. The team, led by Ronald Evans has now been able to reproduce the same effect through drug stimulation.
The research, published in the Cell Journal indicates that running endurance can be increased by more than 50%. "It's tricking the muscle into believing it's been exercised daily," said Evans. "It proves you can have a pharmacological equivalent to exercise."
The drugs don’t follow the same pattern of performance as was previously achieved through anabolic steroids which increased muscle size but not endurance. If human trials get underway soon, the drugs could prove to be a new way to induce the health benefits of exercise.
"Why don't people exercise when they know it's good for them? Because it's hard; you feel fatigued," says William Evans, director of the Nutrition, Metabolism, and Exercise Laboratory at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in Little Rock. "Perhaps a product like this might help people who have a hard time initiating an exercise program."
Endurance training, which triggers a genetic change that causes muscle metabolism to produce more slow-twitch fibres, burns fat and increases endurance. "It looks like they've been able to make fast muscle fibres act more like slow muscle fibres, which have a greater capacity to use fats as fuel," says William Evans.
As yet, it is unknown whether the drugs will have the same effect on humans.
If they do, William Evans says the compounds might be most useful for someone "who needs to lose a lot of weight or who is at risk of diabetes. It may make doing regular submaximal endurance exercise seem easier to people who don't do exercise." However, he says, "if, as I suspect, people look at it as a substitute for exercise, that would be bad news indeed."
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Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
haha. That was my motto, all throughout my twenties.