Exercise in a Bottle?
Actually, they’re talking about endurance exercise…so, it doesn’t look like a substitute for lifting weights. 😉
Elissa is a former research associate with the University of California at Davis, and the author/co-author of over a dozen articles published in scientific journals. Currently a freelance writer and researcher, Elissa brings her multidisciplinary education and training to her writing on nutrition and supplements.
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August 2, 2008
Thanks for posting this interesting article. I first learned of this in
Will Brinks post on Brinks Bodybuilding Revealed. Reading the article helps me understand better the application which is toward special populations like people with diabetes or other debilitating conditions with contraindications to exercise.
I’m glad in the article they didn’t tout it as a replacement for actual activity like endurance and strength training in reasonable healthy people.
But if it does become approved for use in humans as non-prescription, I can only imagine the hype and misclaims athat unscrupulous supplement hucksters would make bilking the masses of already underactive people into buying the magic pill that solves all their problems.
Perhaps for most it would be better to ignore the drug and just take a lesson from the lifestyle of mice.
August 2, 2008
LOL – well it might solve some of their problems…or perhaps “treat” would be a better word.
What the article does point out, however, is that the effects are complementary to exercise. While experiments were also done with sedentary mice (thus the title of the article), the language shouldn’t be taken to mean it’s a surrogate FOR exercise.
For example, the article states that the treated mice “…had less fat than untreated mice. And when tested on a treadmill, they could run about 44 percent farther and 23 percent longer than untreated mice.” Applying these numbers to a hypothetical human example might help bring them to Earth. A sedentary obese-American, who’s 35% bodyfat after taking this drug will certainly be “less fat” than an age/gender/size-matched control who’s 40%…but hardly svelte. Likewise, the control is only likely to be able to run – say – for 3 minutes and perhaps only a quarter-mile before pooping out…whereas the test subject would be able to run 3 minutes and 40 seconds (a 23% improvement) and 0.36 miles instead (a 44%) improvement.
Get it? It’s not going to turn couch potatoes into Olympic track and field stars. A drug like this could “help” – but improvement is relative…”better” is not the same as “great.” Not unlike anabolic steroids, a drug like this – assuming it even works in humans – could result in improvements…but the degree of improvement will still be relative to the effort expended to achieve specific goals.