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'Exercise-In-A-Pill' Boosts Athletic Endurance By 70 Percent, Study Finds (sciencedaily.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Daily: Salk Institute scientists, building on earlier work that identified a gene pathway triggered by running, have discovered how to fully activate that pathway in sedentary mice with a chemical compound, mimicking the beneficial effects of exercise, including increased fat burning and stamina. The study, which appears in Cell Metabolism on May 2, 2017, not only deepens our understanding of aerobic endurance, but also offers people with heart conditions, pulmonary disease, type 2 diabetes or other health limitations the hope of achieving those benefits pharmacologically. Previous work by the Evans lab into a gene called PPAR delta (PPARD) offered intriguing clues: mice genetically engineered to have permanently activated PPARD became long-distance runners who were resistant to weight gain and highly responsive to insulin -- all qualities associated with physical fitness. The team found that a chemical compound called GW1516 (GW) similarly activated PPARD, replicating the weight control and insulin responsiveness in normal mice that had been seen in the engineered ones. However, GW did not affect endurance (how long the mice could run) unless coupled with daily exercise, which defeated the purpose of using it to replace exercise. In the current study, the Salk team gave normal mice a higher dose of GW, for a longer period of time (8 weeks instead of 4). Both the mice that received the compound and mice that did not were typically sedentary, but all were subjected to treadmill tests to see how long they could run until exhausted. Mice in the control group could run about 160 minutes before exhaustion. Mice on the drug, however, could run about 270 minutes -- about 70 percent longer. For both groups, exhaustion set in when blood sugar (glucose) dropped to around 70 mg/dl, suggesting that low glucose levels (hypoglycemia) are responsible for fatigue.
Yes, your reading comprehension shows you'd be a perfect fit for slashdot editing. Or maybe you got tired and couldn't finish reading the summary. I hear there's a pill for that.
Next study would be how to activate genes for reading endurance. Some people just can't go the distance.
Disclaimer: You'll get cancer if you're a rat. Which I assume some Slashdot readers are.
The leading cause of cancer in rats, is lab scientists. If you are a rat, you'd best be staying away from them.
Cigarettes are downright healthy, compared to lab scientists.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
In the late 80s and early 90s I consumed 8000 calories a day and swam 40km a day during the summers. It was not easy as in addition to swimming 8 hours a day I also had a job and it takes time to eat that much. I'm pretty sure that if I had spent less time working and more time eating, I could have processed more food. It is a good thing I was the boss, because when I was training like this I was pretty much a food guzzling zombie slacker when not in the pool.