Towards an Exercise Pill 362
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."
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
Re:Better Living Through Chemistry (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh I realize that, too good to be true & so on & so forth..
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Space Exploration Applications? (Score:1, Insightful)
muscle atrophy is only one problem. another other is loss of bone density. there's nothing in the article which points to a fix for that yet.
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.
Re:Better Living Through Chemistry (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: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:Nerd Decisions... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Pill would save lives. (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.
Re:Better Living Through Chemistry (Score:3, Insightful)
Muscles only half the battle (Score:2, Insightful)
Muscles don't matter very much if you don't have the neurological conditioning to make use of them.
It would be like having a 1000W amplifier with incorrectly set gain or an uncontrolled input voltage.
Starting an exercise regimen is hard (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:2, Insightful)
When it comes to criticizing others on this issue, I don't think it has much to do with being fit or fat. It has to do with people that expect everything for free. The people who criticize others probably work very hard to stay "in shape." It didn't happen over night. It's the same deal for people who have become financially successful, have become capable at a musical instrument, or even honed their programming skills. It's the result of hard work.
I DO think there is a moral superiority for those who work hard to acheive goals vs. hedonists are only willing to accept life's pleasures.
Quit whining about being fat, get off your butt, and do something about it. It won't always be fun or easy, but as Pope Benedict XVI said, "we were not created for comfort, but for greatness..."
The pill sounds good, though. :-)