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