Towards an Exercise Pill

aztektum among many other readers sent us news that medical researchers have developed two drugs that can build muscle tone in mice without exercise. While such an advance may inspire dreams of a "couch potato pill," the article mostly talks about other medical uses, should the drugs prove safe and effective in humans. The doctor in charge of the research is working with sports authorities to develop a test to detect the drugs in athletes. "Researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego reported that they had found two drugs that did 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. 'It's a little bit like a free lunch without the calories,' said Dr. Ronald M. Evans, leader of the Salk group."

Comments

Better Living Through Chemistry

[Jaysyn]

If this drug works as advertised & has no dangerous side effects, why wouldn't *everyone* including athletes take it? I realize that this would be an unfair advantage in the present, but I'm talking about after 20+ years of testing.

Re:Better Living Through Chemistry

[mattpm]

If this drug works as advertised & has no dangerous side effects

That's a big IF

Re:Better Living Through Chemistry

[Your.Master]

This argument has many forms, and I dislike all of them (although I admit your last line made it funny, and maybe the argument was intended to be subordinate to that).

If that's the reason we shouldn't have this, then the problem to solve is "poor people can't have this pill", not "rich people can have this pill". The solution to social inequity is not to drag everybody down to the level of the poorest person, it's to build up the little guy. Somebody living well is not a problem; somebody living poorly is a problem.

Now, if there's a separate reason that we shouldn't have this pill, then we can piss and moan about the rich getting it anyway.

Not necessarily

[Moraelin]

Well, you have to realize that everything in your body is chemistry. No more, no less. All the feedback loops in your body, including "oi, we're doing lots of contracting here, we need more muscle fibers!" or "oi, we're suffocating here, let's have some more blood vessels!" are based on chemical signals. Some chemicals are produced, whether solely as a dedicated hormone/signal, or as a by-product of the cell's normal functions (e.g., CO2.) Some protein binds to them, and does something else. A lot of them regulate the expression of some genes to produce more or less of some other protein, or trigger cell division.

So, yes, if you just force a bunch of cells to divide, you'll get what you wrote.

On the other hand, if you fake the signal which says, basically, "oi, we're doing lots of contracting here, we need more muscle fibers!", you'll get just that. The body doesn't and can't distinguish between the real thing and a faked substance which binds with the same proteins. (Which is why tobacco, marijuana, etc, work, for example. They too bind to some proteins which were meant for something else, but the body can't differentiate between its own canabinoid signals and the THC from hemp.)

Mind you, it doesn't need to be perfect. If the other signals aren't perturbed, the body will still use its other feedback loops for stuff like building blood vessels there or for how many mitochondria it needs there. So you may have some thick muscles, but without the thick veins of real body builders, since they only have to feed those muscles in an unused state. Which isn't a problem, since, well, they do get as much oxygen there as they actually need. You might get faster tired than a real athlete, as a result, though.

But anyway, to cut this rant short and actually answer your question: yes. It would very much help with that.