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Towards an Exercise Pill
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Aug 01, 2008 11:28 AM
from the if-they-can-send-a-man-to-the-moon dept.
from the if-they-can-send-a-man-to-the-moon dept.
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."
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Nerd Decisions... (Score:5, Funny)
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... (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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Re:Nerd Decisions... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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But...? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But...? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you ever look at your email? The answer should be obvious.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
There's a pharmacy here in Springfield that delivers. Now, how to get the front door open for them to hand it to you is another problem entirely.
How Much Does the Pill Weigh? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:How Much Does the Pill Weigh? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:How Much Does the Pill Weigh? (Score:4, Funny)
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Better Living Through Chemistry (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
If this drug works as advertised & has no dangerous side effects
That's a big IF
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, because there aren't any side effects with Viagra.
The erections ARE a side effect, one-eye.
Re:Better Living Through Chemistry (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Better Living Through Chemistry (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Better Living Through Chemistry (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is that a problem? New technology creates newer and better games. Let the athletes dope up, and leave stick ball back in the 19th century where it belongs.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Better Living Through Chemistry (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [baseball-almanac.com] 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.
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Performance Enhancing Nightmare (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Better Living Through Chemistry (Score:5, Interesting)
Kind of like today, but in reverse.
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Re:Better Living Through Chemistry (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Better Living Through Chemistry (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Give me my smart pill (Score:5, Funny)
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...
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The heart muscle? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Countertop meat machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't the biggest problem (ok, biggest technical problem) with in vitro meat [wikipedia.org] 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?
Not necessarily (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I found a photograph [wrensnestonline.com] of one of the mice used in this study.
Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Funny)
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Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
medical researchers have developed two drugs that can build muscle tone in mice without exercise
The New Scientist article says [newscientist.com]
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.
Here's the Cell article (Score:5, Informative)
Real geeks read Cell (with pictures)
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2008.06.051
http://www.cell.com/content/article/fulltext?uid=PIIS0092867408008386 [cell.com]
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.
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Space Exploration Applications? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The summary they posted is not at all what I wrote, but that's exactly the first thing that popped into my head when I read the article myself.
my prediction: cell death!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't based totally on science, just the assumption that anything too good to be true usually is.
There are a couple of principles I might be getting wrong here, please correct me on that.
1. Mammalian hearts all tend to have a lifespan of x number of beats. The slower the heart beats, the longer-lived the critter is. This explains why small, jumpy rodents tend to have short lives and something like a whale is long-lived. This x number seems to be fairly consistent across species.
2. Scientists have shown that restricted calorie diets in mice will lengthen their lives and they believe this will hold true for humans as well. The more you eat, the sooner you die.
3. Exercise has more components than just body movement. Muscles are strengthened through use by the tearing of muscle fibers and the healing process of repairing those tears. There's been talk of direct electric stimulation of muscles to prevent atrophy, first brought up for long space voyages, later depicted in the first Matrix movie when they had the freshly decanted Neo done up like a pin-cushion.
My assumption is that this drug will turn out to be something like steroids. Do steroids work? Absolutely! All other conditions being equal, the athlete who uses steroids will typically outperform the athlete who remains clean. Of course, the one who remains clean will also retain important things like testicles, non-lactating breasts, and a future.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) If it's true your heart beating slower extends it's life, than it would pay to exercise to strenthen your heart. A stronger heart beats less at rest.
2) A restricted calorie diet helps you live longer because certain cells in your body can only reproduce so many times. Cells stop dividing because the telomeres, protective bits of DNA on the end of a chromosome, become shorter with each division and eventually can no longer protect the chromosome (quoted from Wikipedia).
3) If muscle
Have your cake and eat it to? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's about time (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Muscle tone or muscle mass? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
You Won't Look Sexy (Score:3, Informative)
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 [isometric-training.com].
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.
Starting an exercise regimen is hard (Score:3, Insightful)
You can buy it right now (Score:4, Interesting)
Aicar is a common research chemical, and all it takes is a click [caymanchem.com] to purchase some Aicar. The price may prevent most people from using is as a nutritional supplement though..
Re:Universal Soldier anyone ? (Score:5, Funny)
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"?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are quite a few people who cannot exorcise. Elderly people with joint problems. People in casts with broken bones. people recovering from operations. There are a lot of people who the Mem Get of your ass and do something just isn't practical.
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Your server got slashdotted again, Rick? better buy more gerbil wheels for that generator!