Science Is Magic
The newest experiment in modern fat science is a one-a-day pill that actually fools your body into thinking you’re exercising.
Dr Evans…found the drug activated the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise, increasing the amount of calories burnt with no apparent effort. This made the mice resistant to weight gain even on a high-fat diet. He used genetic engineering to create a strain of mice that had an innate resistance to weight gain and had twice the physical endurance of normal mice. Their ability to run an hour longer than a normal mouse led to them being dubbed the “marathon mice”.
If this thing works, a lot of people are going to be a lot of rich. But the idea of an exercise pill is pretty insane. Not that I wouldn’t try it, you understand, after thorough clinical trials! I could be Marathon Mo! But still. Insane.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Science
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Wow, I pill that makes your body think it is exercising! Count me in!
I thought that was called “speed”.
I don’t know much about science, but I find it hard to believe that something like that could work without spectacularly screwing up your metabolism. Also, it sounds like it focuses exclusively on burning fat, so I can’t help but wonder if it cheats people out of the other benefits of exercise, like strength building and cardio. You know, the stuff that makes people healthier even when they don’t lose the fat.
And if this pill ever gets approved for human consumption, how much you want to bet that health insurance carriers will gladly cover for prescriptions for this stuff but still won’t pony up for gym memberships?
Maybe this drug will help some people in exceptional cases, but it seems like our health care system is more about supporting drug companies than about promoting stuff that’s actually good for people.
I was just going to post, isn’t that called crystal meth?
Could a drug like this be developed? It’s very likely, I think. Would it be effective? Probably in a certain population, it would be.
The (not so informative) article seems to suggest (and without reading an original paper, it’s hard to tell because what hits the public isn’t really science anymore once it’s gone through the pen of a journalist) that the drug affects one of the many biochemical pathways used in fat metabolism. Drugs and other treatments that manipulate biochemical pathways are very, very common, so yeah, I think it could be done.
As far as screwing with metabolism, I think many of us already do incredible harm to our metabolism through yo-yo dieting and a sedentary lifestyle.
One thing that this drug wouldn’t address is the behavioral changes that I believe are necessary to long-term health. Ultimately, it seems far simpler to eat less and exercise than it does to assume the expense and potential health risks of medication. (I mean, this could be the next Phen-fen, right? I’d rather not risk it.)
Actually, the best way I know to increase your metabolism is to do heavy strength training. Nah… people will never do that; it requires too much effort.
Not everyone can do heavy strength training. Not those of us who’ve ruptured discs in our back, at least. (Note: When your back makes that funny sound, do not then go on to do your entire weight-lifting routine. Trust me on this one.)
It’s not going to keep me from exercising, either with or without weights (although I now have to do more reps with less weight), but it would be nice to maybe see more results for my efforts.
Oh, hey. Get me that. I can still go to the gym and do free weights to get strong, but then I’ll have less weight on the knees at higher resistance on the elliptical. I’ll never be a skinny girl, and wouldn’t want to if I could (don’t all the stars say the older you get, the more fat you want in the face?) but then I can do all the astanga poses that require more space and less me. When is it coming on the market?
Yeah. Get me that.
Doesn’t make this
“it seems like our health care system is more about supporting drug companies than about promoting stuff that’s actually good for people”
any less true.
P.S. This isn’t that Rimonabant thing they made such a big fuss about that then quietly went away, is it?
Yeah – according to some articles from Vandy and elsewhere they’ve had some little problems with vascular endothelial growth factor and accelerated large polyp growth in the small intestine. You know, the kind most likely to develop into colorectal cancer.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/news/releases/2004/2/2/obesity_and_atherosclerosis_medications_could_cause_increased_risk
But it will not matter. Because the R&D arm of GSK will reduce the risks and it will not matter if you are dead. Because you will be thin.
Meghan, I was just going to say, “Oh look, more pre-packaged speed in a pretty bottle” Like they haven’t done that a million times before.