Drugs Offer Promise of Fitness Without Effort

Drugs Offer Promise of Fitness Without Effort

www.nytimes.com

Can you enjoy the benefits of exercise without the pain of exertion? The answer may one day be yes — just take a pill that tricks the muscles into thinking they have been working out furiously.

Researchers at the Salk Institute report they have found two drugs that do wonders for the athletic endurance of couch potato mice. One drug, known as Aicar, increased the mice’s endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment.

A second drug, GW1516, supercharged the mice to a 75 percent increase in endurance, but had to be combined with exercise to have any effect.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Just what the doctor ordered?

The perfect drug?

Stay inside and at home, watch television, surf the web and stay in shape?

Since all efforts to get people motivated to stay fit have failed, this seems like a good plan.

You'd think if the pharmaceutical manufactures and scientists have funding to work on things like this they could also focus on other life threatening diseases, like say cancer, or AIDS?

Then again, maybe a less active but healthy population has certain advantages.

www.nytimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 31-7-2008 by The_Alarmist2012]

I'm still trying to picture the couch potato mice.

Aside form that, I am interested in the possibilities here.

If you had a choice between a free solo-flex gym set-up, or a year's supply of these drugs which would you take?

Imagine, sitting on your big butts, doing nothing and actually building muscle mass, getting stronger.

Now if we could just find the right combination of drugs to make people get smarter. Maybe they could call that Deny Ignorance?

Where do I sign up??? After 35 years of beating my body three times a week, I would sure love to relax and stay fit,LOL

Zindo

If your physically unable to excercise this just might be the solution for you! If your lazy, unmotivated, and just refuse to excercise.. The solution for you!

I'll stick to the good old fashioned way for the most part. I bet you these new drugs would do wonders for MMA fighting. I'm still hesitant though.

So its not enough now that many use chemical drugs to let our minds lie to themselves, we're going to have our bodies do it too. Toned and powerful muscles are nothing without the discipline and focus of the mind that was used to get them that way.

I have to give a big on this one.

This is the most ridiculous misappropriation of resources I've ever heard of. Who the hell funded these studies... I dearly hope these findings were a side-effect and they were studying something else.

I wonder, if you're going to sit around and be lazy all the time, why do you need to be in shape? I do however, see another addition to the cocktails of chemicals our troops are on, in the near future.

As far as I'm concerned, NO THANKS. Keep your encapsulated faux-fitness away from me.

I think I will let them fool around with this one in other animals for a few more years. I don't think I want to be out in front with this one. Fooling around with ATP re-uptake can have some unintended consequences I would bet.

I was pretty out in front on some of the hormone treatments and did not have a problem but they had been studied for quite a while first. I still have some cold storage 4AD I will likely never finish off at my age.

Interesting literature out on pubmed on this stuff I will likely be keeping an eye on. For space travel it might become very important some day.

[edit on 7/31/2008 by UFOTECH]

reply to post by Ambient Sound


In a society that likes to have a pill for everything I'd have to say, like it or not, opposed or for it will hardly matter.

You think Viagra became a huge money maker.

If this stuff works out, I'm sure millions will demand it.

Then again in a high tech culture where people will be spending more and more time in front of interactive forms of media and information, games and entertainment... These drugs could be the perfect thing for our less active lives. Maybe one day humans will not have to move, we will live our lives in a kind of capsule where we are 'plugged in' to the world verses having to actually be there, machines will do everything for us.

Would you like the red pill now?

You know that someone who is bed ridden or even in a coma might have a lot less recovery time if they are taking something like this. There are potential positives if the animal trials are taken to human research I would bet patients that are bed ridden will really benefit.

Yes you are right it could have some benefits for many different situations, if indeed the side effects don't turn your heart into a foot and your eyes into penis's.
I wouldn't trust taking something like that for 1 million dollars.

Originally posted by UFOTECH
You know that someone who is bed ridden or even in a coma might have a lot less recovery time if they are taking something like this. There are potential positives if the animal trials are taken to human research I would bet patients that are bed ridden will really benefit.

...and with that post a mental image of Terri Schiavo looking like She-Hulk entered my mind, for which I thank you.

I'd take it if it ever hit the stores. Between family, work, miscelaneous menial tasks of life, and commuting I generally find myself with a handfull of options every day. Do I:
A. Spend some precious time with my children & my wife?
B. After the kids have gone to bed do I spend a couple of hours with my wife before she goes to bed?
C. After she's gone to bed do I spend a couple of hours unwinding and playing a video game or surfing the web?
D. On the weekends do I spend some time hiking or fishing?

Or:

E. Do I let one of these things suffer so I can consume 2 hours every other day to go to the gym?

I'll tell you this, the gym loses everytime. Maybe when my kids are older and my wife and I can go together and the kids can go to the library or the movies or something, then I'll worry about it. Personally, I don't believe that it's laziness that's making Americans fat anyway. It's actually too much hectic activity and nervous stress that is making people fat. The solution isn't to try and force yet another activity into an already overflowing day, it's removing activities from said day and using the time saved to actually relax.

It sounds like Stacker 2 to me. Fat burners like this mess with your thyroid, and when you mess with it... it forgets to work on its own. I think this hapened to my mother, who now needs pills to controll her thyroid.


One of the news sites had a comment about the story,

“Gosh, I hope it's a pill that dissolves in your mouth so I don't have to get up and get a glass of water to take it.”



[edit on 7/31/08 by Cyprex]

Originally posted by UFOTECH
You know that someone who is bed ridden or even in a coma might have a lot less recovery time if they are taking something like this. There are potential positives if the animal trials are taken to human research I would bet patients that are bed ridden will really benefit.

Now that is an excellent point and one that had not occured to me. That is possibly a positive and beneficial use for something like this. But still, for the average person who is just too lazy to stay active, its will just be another drug big pharma can get people dependant on, then charge a fortune for.

Nice term: faux-fitness. That's exactly what it sounds like. I wonder what the possible side-effect disclaimers will be like on this stuff. Do you think you will have to go to the hospital if your faux-muscles stay flexed for more than 4 hours?

Originally posted by Cyprex
“Gosh, I hope it's a pill that dissolves in your mouth so I don't have to get up and get a glass of water to take it.”

Being lazy and staying fit will not be hard to sell, especially to Americans who are the world's fattest and laziest... or so most people seem to think we are, we'll show them... We will be the laziest and most fit!

Maybe they can find a way to combine these drugs with home delivery pizza?

Originally posted by The_Alarmist2012

Drugs Offer Promise of Fitness Without Effort

www.nytimes.com

Can you enjoy the benefits of exercise without the pain of exertion? The answer may one day be yes — just take a pill that tricks the muscles into thinking they have been working out furiously.

Researchers at the Salk Institute report they have found two drugs that do wonders for the athletic endurance of couch potato mice. One drug, known as Aicar, increased the mice’s endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment.

A second drug, GW1516, supercharged the mice to a 75 percent increase in endurance, but had to be combined with exercise to have any effect.

(visit the link for the full news article)

sounds a bit like steriods in a way, i would like some dose it make the muscles stronger?

reply to post by ZindoDoone


Hey I work out 4 to 5 times a week to keep my body in shape and in good health and I don't want any miracle pill.

One of the reason I go out to a gym and exercise is because the satisfaction of doing just that.

The big pharma wants us fat, lazy and out shape, so we can pop pills to "help fix" the consequences, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.

Now a pill is going to fix all that? I don't believe it, a pill to increase muscle mass, but how about the stuff we put in our mouth that is as much the fault of our ill health habits as not doing any exercises.

Is something here that doesn't add.

I think this also has big benefits for older people, when the body gets too old to physically exercise they can take these to keep the body operating, it may also increase the amount of physical exercise they can undertake.

I think this drug would have the massive potential of increasing our lifespan, forget the massive implications of an aging world. I just know that in 40-50ish years i will still want to live another 20 or so years.

This would be a great thing for people with Rhuematiod Arthritis and other Auto Immune diseases that prevent them from getting enough proper exercise--but I'm not holding my breath. It seems for everything we tweek, something in the body goes thunk!!

A pill for everything is the goal.

A "miracle drug" dependant lazy home-bound American, ultimately addicted to fast food, television and the internet will be an easy person to control.

What I find amusing is the drug ads on television, and how they quietly tell you all the possible but rare side affects at the end after they have shown you how much your life can be improved by that drug.

One day they will have a pill that will make us totally compliant, by then they will have enough control over people that they will actually want it!