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

Nerd Decisions...

[RandoX]

Stand in line for a pill to make me muscular, or stand in line for the new iPhone?

At least the iPhone won't leave me as soon as I talk.

Re:Nerd Decisions...

[Thiez]

Take the pill, and then beat up a nerd who bought the new iPhone and steal it.

Or don't get the new iPhone at all. Who needs that thing?

Re:Nerd Decisions...

[Crazy Taco]

Or don't get the new iPhone at all. Who needs that thing?

Agreed. I'm not standing in line for a phone until Microsoft makes one. Then I might, though, because MS products are 1337. Or at least better than their Apple counterparts. Microsoft only needed 2 generations to make a Zune MP3 player that is better and has more features than a 7th generation iPod.

But...?

[mattpm]

How do you get the couch potatoes to the pharmacy in the first place?

Re:But...?

[ColdWetDog]

How do you get the couch potatoes to the pharmacy in the first place?

Don't you ever look at your email? The answer should be obvious.

How Much Does the Pill Weigh?

[abscissa]

How much does the pill weigh? You can damn well bet I am not going to move my hand to pick up more than 8-10 grams.

Re:How Much Does the Pill Weigh?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Good news! It's a suppository.

Re:How Much Does the Pill Weigh?

[larry bagina]

the pill or the mouse?

Re:How Much Does the Pill Weigh?

[jbeaupre]

It's "Salk Institute" not "Gere Institute"

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

[Darkness404]

Exactly. Just like the steroid "problem" in baseball, if all the athletes take steroids, then how does one team/player have an advantage over another?

Re:Better Living Through Chemistry

[CogDissident]

I don't know. Maybe because the "Rich And Wealthy" would be the only ones who could afford it, and thus we'd have an upper-class composed of bodybuilder supermen, and a lower class consisting of only the frail.

Kind of like today, but in reverse.

Re:Better Living Through Chemistry

[Z34107]

Thing is, steroids aren't exactly without side effects. Forcing every MLB player to take steroids isn't a good solution. (But, you still haven't solved your problem - how are you going to force every player to take the same AMOUNT of the required steroids?)

That said, Bruce Banner did this, like, a million years ago. Changes user color to green. Incompatible with mood stabilizers. Lame.

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.

Re:Better Living Through Chemistry

[SBacks]

The problem is that it unbalances the game.

If everyone was taking steroids, you'd have to greatly extend the outfield so as to keep the game from becoming even more of a home run contest than it currently is. And, since steroids don't make you that much faster (as compared to how much further you can hit a ball), outfielders wouldn't be able to cover all that extra room, and batting averages would skyrocket.

So, yeah, if everyone had steroids, no one has an advantage. But, the game they'd play wouldn't really be baseball any more.

Re:Better Living Through Chemistry

[sumdumass]

It isn't unlikely that Insurance will pay for it. Many people who go through traumatic injuries have to spend weeks if not years in rehab strengthening muscles and so on.

I foresee the primary use of this drug as a way to increase strength in elderly people or people with sore joints that can't work out like the rest of us easily or without pain. I also see it being giving after operations or whatever that have medical patients confined to a bed for long periods of time. If this drug was/is "safe", it could mean not only a massive savings in rehab costs but also a dramatic increase in the quality of life for a lot of patients.

I don't care that some baseball player might use it to skip 20% of their already strenuous workout regime. If it works, it can do, or has the potential to do wonders for many people with medical problems.

Re:Better Living Through Chemistry

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

The problem is that it unbalances the game.

If everyone was taking steroids, you'd have to greatly extend the outfield so as to keep the game from becoming even more of a home run contest than it currently is. And, since steroids don't make you that much faster (as compared to how much further you can hit a ball), outfielders wouldn't be able to cover all that extra room, and batting averages would skyrocket.

There are a few problems with this. One is that we really don't know that steroids make everyone a much better baseball player. If you look at the list of players who've been suspended you see a lot of names like Matt Lawton and Mike Morse, and not too many stars. Maybe this just means that the stars can afford untraceable stuff, but we don't really know. But really, and this surprises people, there is very little proof that steroids really help a player become better, and, even if we assume they do, little explanation of how they do it. Is it pure strength? An increase in hand-eye coordination? Some people suggest they improve vision. Can they work with all people equally? If not, why, and who benefits most?

More importantly, baseball can be changed very significantly with fairly small adjustments to the rules that govern it. An adjustment in the height of the pitcher's mound after the 1968 season increased scoring by about a run a game. Juiced balls dramatically increased run scoring for one season in both 1930 and 1987. The Colorado Rockies have radically changed the offensive environment of their ballpark in large part by changing the method in which they store baseballs (they keep them in a humidor now).

There are all sorts of things that could be done to "deaden" the game. Mandate a minimum thickness of bat handles -- whip-handled bats allow incredibly quick swings. Deaden the ball if you want. Raise the mound. Enforce a larger strike zone. Force batters to stay in the batter's box, and don't let them wear Craig Biggio-style body armor so they have to worry about getting hit if they lunge over the plate. Call it a strike if they get hit over the plate, or if they make no effort to get out of the way. Limit the amount of times a pitcher can throw to first with a runner on, encouraging base stealing and making speedy, athletic players more valuable than lumbering sluggers. Etc., etc.

Bill James runs through these ideas and more in his Historical Baseball Abstract. As James says, with only small changes in the equipment and rules, baseball has been a game of 10-9 slugfests and of 3-2 bunt and steal games. It could be either one now, but Major League Baseball thinks that home runs bring profits. So that's what we've got.

Re:Better Living Through Chemistry

[eredin]

FTA, AICAR has been around since at least 1994, and from this article, GW1516 "has a relatively simple chemical structure and can be synthesized easily." It should be relatively inexpensive.

The heart muscle?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the type of muscle tissue found in the heart? Could this be used to help rebuild a heart that's been weakened by a heart attack?

Countertop meat machine

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Isn't the biggest problem (ok, biggest technical problem) with in vitro meat the fact that the muscle tissue that it grows can't get any exercise and is therefore soft and textureless?

Couldn't this help with that problem?

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Never in history has there ever been a better time to be a mouse!

Uh oh

[larry bagina]

Once they develop pills for big dicks, fashion sense, personality, and odor elimination, Linux development will cease!

Re:Uh oh

[gregbot9000]

Once they develop that pill most society will cease, we'll just all live in the forest being beautiful. Maybe that's how elves got started?

Huh?

[sm62704]

medical researchers have developed two drugs that can build muscle tone in mice without exercise

The New Scientist article says

Evans and his colleague Vihang Narkar wanted to see whether a drug that activates PPAR-delta could turn regular adult rodents to miniature marathon winners. But the drug - called WG1516 - did nothing for the mice but switch on a handful of genes in their muscles.

However, when the researchers paired doses of WG1516 with a month of training - half an hour on a treadmill, five days a week - mice given the drug jogged longer and further than drug-free mice.

Also, it isn't two drugs either one of which do the trick, but two drugs taken together. Not a good summary at all, if the NYT article says the same as the NS article.

Space Exploration Applications?

[halsver]

Presuming that this will be safe for use in humans, could this be one of the missing keys for space exploration? I'm imagining Joe Astronaut wakes from his month-long slumber on route to Planet X. His muscles have atrophied over this time, but by using these pills and doing some remedial exercise, he is ready to face the perils of the alien planet in days!

I 3 the future.

     

Give me my smart pill

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a pill that will improve critical thinking skills! And logical reasoning ability!

And while we are at it, lets make it inhance one's capacity for impartial objectivity when making important decisions.

I would spend my entire life savings on this stuff just to dump it in my city's tap water.

One can dream...

Re:Universal Soldier anyone ?

[antirelic]

How about "universal soldier MICE"?!?! Have you not seen all the wonder drugs made for mice? The world, fooled by the tiny size of mice, have overlooked all the scientific breakthroughs in the field of "super mice enhancement". Everything from "mental performance enhances", "cancer curing medicine" and now "muscle building drugs"... The days of humans are number. Fuck Asimov, Mice dont follow no rules.

Can we please get a tag called "supermice"?

Have your cake and eat it to?

[Duncan Blackthorne]

Nice idea, but I'm not going to hold my breath. My chosen sport is cycling, and I like to ride long distances, the faster the better. If, on top of the training I do, this pill improves my endurance and other attributes similarly to what it did in mice, and it does that with no life-threatening side effects, then I might consider it. However every "miracle drug" that has ever come along has always come up with some long-term side-effects that shorten life spans or even kill you outright. I'll stick to my workouts and training rides for now, thank you very much.

It's about time

[Paul Carver]

Although I run 5K at least 4-5 times per week and try to do at least a couple of hours of weight lifting per week, I still think that self righteous "eat less, exercise more" preachers are a bunch of jerks.

Every food or weight related story on Slashdot brings these jerks out of the woodwork. They build up their self esteem by criticizing others. Like an anorexic or a bulimic, they have nothing important to be proud of so they build their self esteem on their weight and feel superior to people who are heavier than they are.

Without resorting to a puritan religious justification, how can you argue that a task "should" be difficult? If it's easier for me to be fit than it is for you, does that make you "better" than me?

If a pill can make it easier for you to lose weight and has no adverse effects why shouldn't you use it? Only a religious jerk demands that people should suffer more than necessary.

If one person enjoys rich creamy deserts and another person enjoys basketball how can you attribute "moral" superiority to one or the other. They're both doing things they enjoy. There's absolutely no moral implication that one of those things tends to increase weight and the other tends to decrease weight.

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.

Muscle tone or muscle mass?

[beanlover]

TFA doesn't say the word "tone" unfortunately and there is a difference. My son was born with Hypotonia which is low muscle tone. When I read the summary I got a little excited thinking this could help him out going forward.

Basically the tone of the muscle is the elasticity of the muscle (this is from memory when the Dr.'s were explaining this to us after he had been diagnosed). It has little to nothing to do with strength and, due to his condition, makes him more prone to hernias and similar problems (he was born with a hernia which was hidden by a communicating hydrocele).

Those with low muscle tone are more flexible (so add that to your GF requirement list :)). My son can touch his shin bone with the top of his foot (try it) as well as do complete splits, etc.

We had to get him orthotics to help his ankles support his weight as he grew. This, fortunately (for him...not for us parental units), has NOT slowed him down. He's currently five and very active...loves to be outdoors and catch bugs...but I digress.

Anyway...thought I'd point that difference out.

Here's the Cell article

[nbauman]

Real geeks read Cell (with pictures)

DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2008.06.051

http://www.cell.com/content/article/fulltext?uid=PIIS0092867408008386

AMPK and PPARÎ Agonists Are Exercise Mimetics

The benefits of endurance exercise on general health make it desirable to identify orally active agents that would mimic or potentiate the effects of exercise to treat metabolic diseases. Although certain natural compounds, such as reseveratrol, have endurance-enhancing activities, their exact metabolic targets remain elusive. We therefore tested the effect of pathway-specific drugs on endurance capacities of mice in a treadmill running test. We found that PPARÎ/Î agonist and exercise training synergistically increase oxidative myofibers and running endurance in adult mice. Because training activates AMPK and PGC1α, we then tested whether the orally active AMPK agonist AICAR might be sufficient to overcome the exercise requirement. Unexpectedly, even in sedentary mice, 4 weeks of AICAR treatment alone induced metabolic genes and enhanced running endurance by 44%. These results demonstrate that AMPK-PPARÎ pathway can be targeted by orally active drugs to enhance training adaptation or even to increase endurance without exercise.

Performance Enhancing Nightmare

[mpapet]

Instead of ignoring the facts regarding drugs and basing your beliefs on ignorance, there are a HUGE list of issues that arise as a result of ignoring pharmacology in sport.

*Minor league versions of the sport are then required to take drugs. Impossible! you exclaim. The minors are for preparing/selecting for the majors. Part of your preparation now includes pharmacology because your performance will not vaguely resemble professional level performances without them.

*The system that feeds the minor league system is then required to take drugs. Pharmacology driven performances become the norm. How do you maintain a boundary between pharma/no pharma performances?

Very quickly this will become an issue of children taking performance enhancing drugs, which is already happening. Impossible! Well, then please explain how EXACTLY high school -> college football(u.s.) players balloon in size and weight in less than 1 year? And then the next jump from college to pro creates more impossible body metrics.

If you can't tollerate my complex reasoing, then look at sports pharma as a way to fix every game played. I can pick winners and losers by giving one team pharma X and giving the other pharma Y. I can pick a World Series winner at the beginning of the season just that easily. Impossible you say? Well ask Bjarne Riis about doping his way into a Le Tour victory.

I would like to know what the medical purpose of this pharma is and who is paying for the research. With EPO, there's a legitimate purpose.

You Won't Look Sexy

[OldMiner]

What this researcher has done is found a way to easily convert one type of muscle fiber "fast twitch" into a different kind "slow twitch" with a drug. The balance of these fibers makes the difference between someone who is decent at sprinting and someone who is decent at a marathon. Normally, training your muscles from fast twitch to slow twitch takes a long training regiment. Primarily, what has been contributed here is a better understanding of the underlying biochemistry. See this article on building muscle.

But note, this isn't going to make you healthier inherently. It'll just make it easier to do longer term, load-bearing workouts without getting tired as easily. You will still get winded just as easily. You will still have to sweat. Your legs will just tell you to stop a little later than normal.

You can buy it right now

[Yahma]

You can buy Aicar right now, there is no need to wait for it to be synthesized or mass produced.

Aicar is a common research chemical, and all it takes is a click to purchase some Aicar. The price may prevent most people from using is as a nutritional supplement though..