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posted by martyb on Sunday October 04 2015, @01:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the use-only-as-directed dept.

Everyone knows that exercise improves health, and ongoing research continues to uncover increasingly detailed information on its benefits for metabolism, circulation, and improved functioning of organs such as the heart, brain, and liver. With this knowledge in hand, scientists may be better equipped to develop "exercise pills" that could mimic at least some of the beneficial effects of physical exercise on the body. But a review of current development efforts, publishing October 2 in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, ponders whether such pills will achieve their potential therapeutic impact, at least in the near future.

"We have recognized the need for exercise pills for some time, and this is an achievable goal based on our improved understanding of the molecular targets of physical exercise," says coauthor Ismail Laher, of the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Several laboratories are developing exercise pills, which at this early stage are being tested in animals to primarily target skeletal muscle performance and improve strength and energy use—essentially producing stronger and faster muscles. But of course the benefits of exercise are far greater than its effects on only muscles.

Couch potatoes would rejoice, of course, but exercise pills could also benefit the bed-ridden or astronauts who spend extended periods in microgravity.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04 2015, @01:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04 2015, @01:54AM (#244995)

    Ever since I started working out on a regular basis I've been thinking that this is the kind of drug we ought to be focusing on. As living organisms we are designed to optimize for scarcity - so if you don't use your muscle you lose it because you obviously don't need it and dumping it saves calories, if there are tons of resources like food its OK to get fat and die early because there will be plenty of other members of the species to carry on. Etc.

    But we are so resource rich that we don't need to optimize for scarcity any more. We need to figure out how to optimize for plenty. Drugs and genetic engineering are the only way. All the fuck-ups along the way are going to be heinous though, tons of people are going to end up being human guinea pigs with some pretty terrible consequences. But in the long run, unless we have a global catastrophe which knocks the entire world back into scarcity, that is where we are going.

    • (Score: 1) by TheReaperD on Sunday October 04 2015, @02:54PM

      by TheReaperD (5556) on Sunday October 04 2015, @02:54PM (#245171)

      I'm glad to see someone else who recognized it. We've broken Darwinian evolution with our society and medicine and this leaves us one of two choices: 1) Undo all of our advances and return to an animalistic way of life to restore the "natural order" (not my choice) or 2) Take control of our own evolution. This means doing some things that we currently find very distasteful such as human genetic engineering with advanced eugenics. Of course, the tricky part is figuring out a way to force people to engineer the necessary evolutionary traits without going all Island of Dr. Moreau or WWII Nazi Eugenisist. I have to admit, it's a scary prospect and we have to be very careful.

      --
      Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
    • (Score: 2) by TheLink on Sunday October 04 2015, @03:53PM

      by TheLink (332) on Sunday October 04 2015, @03:53PM (#245195) Journal

      For skeletal* muscle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Blue [wikipedia.org]
      *you don't want an overly enlarged heart and similar.

      But for bone you might want the increased density or bone reshaping and regeneration in only select places not everywhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopetrosis [wikipedia.org]
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paget's_disease_of_bone [wikipedia.org]

      Similarly for blood vessels you might only want extra blood vessels in certain areas and not elsewhere.

      So yes some of the exercise induced growth/changes might not be so bad if you turn it on for everything (for that type), but not so for other stuff.

      p.s. if population growth and consumption continues we are heading towards scarcity. The Earth is finite. So don't be so sure we are heading for times of plenty. We might be able to have as many virtual clothes, homes and toys as we want (and the Corporations allow with their Monopolies), but not so much of the real stuff.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04 2015, @08:28PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04 2015, @08:28PM (#245331)

        > p.s. if population growth and consumption continues we are heading towards scarcity.

        That's the malthusian fallacy. It was false when Malthus proposed it because those are only two of the three components and even those two aren't a given.

        (1) Population levels out, even declines in every country that achieves western levels of wealth.
        (2) Malthus didn't account for increases in efficiency - all the population and consumption growth was fed by improvements in farming.

        Fundamentally it comes down to energy - with enough energy we can operate hydroponic warehouses on a scale large enough to feed hundreds of billions of people and fit them all in areas of land that are essentially unpopulated today. Even something as inefficient as solar would require less than 1% of the earth's surface to power the entire planet's energy requirements. Get cheap fusion working, or even just cheap clean fission, and we will be fine.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04 2015, @02:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04 2015, @02:07AM (#244996)

    You have to put people in a magnetic field that forces the muscles to contract in a coordinated way to make the body exercise. Meanwhile the signals between muscle and brain need to be modified so the person feels they are in their preferred resting state. Also the brain needs to be kept busy doing whatever it is the person would otherwise do. Maybe some goggles and stephen hawking type device to let them post stuff online or just watch movies.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 04 2015, @02:54AM

      by frojack (1554) on Sunday October 04 2015, @02:54AM (#245004) Journal

      AC: You have to put people in a magnetic field that forces the muscles to contract in a coordinated way to make the body exercise.

      Magnetic?

      sign.

      --
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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04 2015, @07:50AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04 2015, @07:50AM (#245071)

        We already do this to poor black males.

        Tasers....

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday October 04 2015, @04:46PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 04 2015, @04:46PM (#245220)

        Gotta give AC credit, he didn't say it has to be a constant magnetic field. Moving the field works as well as moving the conductor and all that. If MRI field strength is already high enough to cause nervous system anomalies something like a non-contact TENS system is probably not far away without all that icky personal contact stuff.

  • (Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday October 04 2015, @02:10AM

    by mendax (2840) on Sunday October 04 2015, @02:10AM (#244997)

    I like what Mark Twain had to say on the subject of exercise in a speech [pbs.org] he gave at Delmonico's Restaurant in New York on the occasion of his 70's birthday:

    I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and I was always tired. But let another person try my way, and see where he will come out. I desire now to repeat and emphasize that maxim: We can’t reach old age by another man’s road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you.

    I think he would have enjoyed taking this pill if it were distributed in the form of a cigar.

    --
    It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
    • (Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday October 04 2015, @02:53AM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 04 2015, @02:53AM (#245003)
      I'm pretty sure Mark Twain got lot of exercise through his daily life that we can easily avoid. I haven't atually gone *up* a flight of stairs in over a month. I'm also fatter than Mr. Clemens ever was.
      --
      🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04 2015, @04:24AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04 2015, @04:24AM (#245020)

      That's a demonstration of survivor bias. All the people who got sick and died because they didn't maintain their physical health - being dead they couldn't write a testimonial to sloth. Twain got lucky, life is a lottery, even poor people can win the lotto.

      More generally, if you want to understand the world - don't be distracted by what you can see, think about what's missing.

  • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday October 04 2015, @04:50AM

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Sunday October 04 2015, @04:50AM (#245025)

    This trend is phenomenally unlikely. For the scientific mind just look at the humans that currently spend their lives as professional atheletes. Performance enchancing drugs have largely been relegated to *slight* changes in metabolic activity. Steroids are poisonous. EPO has side-effects. Many other molecules become toxic by the need for the liver to adapt to break down their metabolites (the secondary reason for steroids being poisonous, surprisingly).

    There is a disturbing trend in the media and that includes "scientific pop-sci" type articles to cast being clinically obese as something that can be treated in anyway other than eating less and exercising more. Sure there is a society structure problem (hard to exercise if you are working two jobs and decent food expensive for many), but that doesn't sell newspapers.

    The massive irony that the pharmaceutical industry is trying to sell these cataclysmic deleterious molecules while at the same time the political forces are trying to ban naturally occurring ones in any quanitities, should give pause to believe anything along these lines.

    Follow the money...

  • (Score: 1) by throwaway28 on Sunday October 04 2015, @05:56AM

    by throwaway28 (5181) on Sunday October 04 2015, @05:56AM (#245038) Journal

    Having broken or damaged countless objects in the past -- one of the most surprising, was breaking a small pair of wire cutters trying to cut something too thick -- knowing when to hold back and not use strength, is a very important component of owning strength. If you suddenly tripled or quintupled your own strength, without exercise and without practice, how long would it take to get used to it ? How many times would you trip and fall, or accidentally walk through a wall*, just because you don't know how much force to use anymore ?

    * for example, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405325/ [imdb.com] (Sky High, 2005)

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Sunday October 04 2015, @08:26AM

    by RamiK (1813) on Sunday October 04 2015, @08:26AM (#245085)

    http://www.cell.com/trends/pharmacological-sciences/pdf/S0165-6147%2815%2900187-X.pdf [cell.com]

    The easiest way to identify working "exercise pills" is to look up the average muscle-to-fat ratios of beef on the market. When skeletal-muscle targeting drug works, it ends up being abused by farmers years before it even hits human trials.
    Also, as the study hints regarding GW501516, getting closer to market release, you'll start seeing doping incidents and record breaking in sports. Though it's still no indication of the safety over long term usage so it could still fail in late stage clinical trials.

    --
    compiling...
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 04 2015, @05:33PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday October 04 2015, @05:33PM (#245246) Journal

      When skeletal-muscle targeting drug works, it ends up being abused by farmers years before it even hits human trials.

      And due to residues of it in the meat, that meat will soon be considered especially healthy. ;-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by EQ on Sunday October 04 2015, @08:48AM

    by EQ (1716) on Sunday October 04 2015, @08:48AM (#245091)

    Think of the ability to provide exercise benefits to patients who are restricted to bed. For instance, post-surgical recovery from major surgery (open heart surgeries for instance) would be one of the best places for this. The same goes for people suffering from disease processes that prevent them from exercising, like heart failure, COPD, cystic fibrosis, various cancers, or even used temporarily for something as simple as a bone fracture to an arm or leg that prevents you from exercising for a while. Also, think about the ability to provide exercise benefits to paralytics. Os this is not just for "couch potato" people - it has great medical applicability.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Farkus888 on Sunday October 04 2015, @11:57AM

    by Farkus888 (5159) on Sunday October 04 2015, @11:57AM (#245138)

    Gut microbiology aside snakes are the key to survival at the level of laziness most of us live. They are sedentary but do not lose strength at the rate we do. A little gene splicing might be able to hook our species up.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2015, @03:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2015, @03:37PM (#245667)

      Gene splicing with snakes? Sweet, I've always been wanting to bang nagas and medusas.

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday October 04 2015, @11:39PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Sunday October 04 2015, @11:39PM (#245385) Homepage

    Here's the exercise schedule that I've been using (an adapted form of couch to 5k). j means minutes jogging, w is minutes walking, so 5w, 2j means 5 minutes walk followed by 2 minutes jog.

    | Week | Day 1       | Day 2 | Day 3          | Day 4 | Day 5       | Day 6 | Day 7       |
    |------+-------------+-------+----------------+-------+-------------+-------+-------------|
    |    1 | 5w, 2j, 5w  | ..... | 5w, 2j, 5w     | ..... | 5w, 3j, 5w  | ..... |             |
    |    2 | 5w, 3j, 5w  | ..... | 5w, 4j, 5w     | ..... | 5w, 5j, 5w  | ..... |             |
    |    3 | 5w, 6j, 5w  | ..... | 4j, 5w, 4j, 5w | ..... | 5w, 7j, 5w  | ..... |             |
    |    4 | 5w, 7j, 5w  | ..... | 5w, 8j, 5w     | ..... | 5w, 9j, 5w  | ..... |             |
    |    5 | 5w, 9j, 5w  | ..... | 6j, 5w, 6j, 5w | ..... | 5w, 10j, 5w | ..... | 5w, 11j, 5w |
    |    6 | 5w, 11j, 5w | ..... | 13j, 5w        | ..... | 15j, 5w     | ..... |             |
    |    7 | 15j, 5w     | ..... | 8j, 5w, 8j, 5w | ..... | 16j, 5w     | ..... | 17j, 5w     |
    |    8 | 17j, 5w     | ..... | 18j, 5w        | ..... | 20j, 5w     | ..... |             |
    |    9 | 20j         | ..... | 12j, 5w, 12j   | ..... | 24j         | ..... | 25j         |

    (Fuck you lameness filter.)

    After this it caps out at alternating days of 30 minutes jogging and rest.

    I'm currently on week 5 and it's working really well. On the off days I do strength training like pushups.

    Quick layman fitness advice: there's two types of exercise: cardio and strength. Cardio (like jogging) is for your heart and endurance, strength is for, well, strength (like weight lifting). You need both types. You need off days for your body to rest and recover, since exercise is fundamentally "break down then rebuild stronger". As long as you exercise, rest, and gradually increase, you will see improvement.

    In the case of the pill mentioned in the article, you would primarily be missing the cardio part, the part that helps prevent heart attacks, which is probably the most important benefit of exercise for couch potatoes. Lifting weights is great and all, but...

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    • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Tuesday October 06 2015, @03:55AM

      by Murdoc (2518) on Tuesday October 06 2015, @03:55AM (#245955) Homepage

      Cool! I tried the C25K thing and quickly found that I couldn't even do half what they are prescribing. And since I'm not obese or anything, being told that I am less than half as capable as a "couch potato" was pretty disheartening. So I tried just what I could do, and after a couple of weeks saw no improvement. My motivation pretty much died there. Now looking at yours, I'll probably give this a try again (although why did I have to learn about this in the autumn, dammit!), maybe it'll work better for me. I'm far more interested in endurance building than strength; too many things tire me out these days. Anyway thanks for sharing this!

      • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday October 06 2015, @11:50PM

        by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday October 06 2015, @11:50PM (#246258) Homepage

        The first week is the hardest since your body is not used to moving, even for two minutes jogging. If you want an easier start, you could try alternating 5w, 1j, 5w until you stop getting stitches in your sides before starting the exercise schedule, or even 10w or 5w depending on the exact potato-state of your body.

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