Exercise in Disguise
New ‘exercise pill’ mimics fitness effects, but to what extent?
A new discovery could have you canceling your gym membership, trashing the treadmill and dumping your dumbbells – but that doesn’t mean you should. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, Calif., have identified pathways that are activated in response to exercise and dramatically increase endurance.
Sedentary mice that took the pathway-activating drug for four weeks were resistant to weight gain and had an improved response to insulin. And when tested on a treadmill, they could run about 44 percent longer than untreated mice.
“That’s as much improvement as we get with regular exercise,” says Vihang Narkar, the lead author of the study.
In addition to their allure for athletes, drugs that mimic the effects of exercise could potentially treat muscle diseases and other metabolic disorders, help bedridden hospital patients and fight obesity.
But couch potatoes might hold on to their love handles a little longer, since the drug is currently a mouse exclusive. And dig your dumbbells out of the dumpster; old-fashioned sweat has some perks anyway. Frank Booth, a University of Missouri expert on inactivity, says the “exercise pill” study did not test all of the commonly known benefits of exercise, and taking the pill cannot be considered a workout replacement. Heart rate, aerobic capacity, blood pressure and susceptibility to many chronic diseases are just a few factors Booth says the researchers didn’t test.
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