Get the same effect as training, only without sweating/ShutterStock
We all know that exercise is good for health, but the burdens of life (and a bit of laziness, let's face it) prevent many of us from applying this benefit.
What would you say if you were offered a pill that would make your muscles in your body feel like you've been exercising, without moving an inch?
This is exactly the development Prof. Baha Elgandi, a medicinal chemist and associate professor of anesthesiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is working on.
The expectation - the pill will be in stores within 5 years.
As we age, we gradually lose more and more muscle mass, strength and function.
This degeneration that occurs with age is called sarcopenia.
The team working with Prof. Elgandi hopes that the pill that mimics physical activity will be able to treat this muscle atrophy and also improve the level of physical fitness of people with serious diseases such as cancer, heart failure and various degenerative diseases.
"We're absolutely not saying in any way that people shouldn't exercise," said Prof. Elgandi in an interview with Fortune magazine, "but I hope the drug will help people who can't exercise. In other cases, it can complement exercise programs to provide more benefits to patients. And when it comes to The general public, this pill can be combined with the new diabetes drugs that are used for weight loss."
Elgandi and his team have been working for over a decade on the development of the revolutionary pill.
They developed a group of proteins that are responsible for activating some of the most important metabolic pathways in tissues.
Mice treated with the pill showed a marked improvement in their running endurance (yes, they ran on a treadmill specially built for rodents) and their muscle fibers became more resistant to fatigue.
The team then created powerful and effective new molecules that, in further research on rat heart cells, were scientifically shown to cause beneficial changes in the heart muscle that are induced by exercise.
"The new pill we developed is expected to reach clinics in the next five years," said Prof. Elgandi.
"The transition from animals to humans takes a long time. We need to do a lot more pre-clinical tests, which are essential to ensure the safety of the product."
"These compounds we've created mimic some of the same adaptations that occur in muscle after exercise. Your muscles think they're exercising even though they might not," added Dr. Thomas Burris, director of the Department of Pharmacodynamics at the University of Florida, part of Prof. Allegandi's research team. Metabolic health, they cause weight loss, fat mass loss, improved insulin sensitivity and improved exercise endurance." "
With the skyrocketing popularity of diabetes medications used for weight loss," adds Dr. Boris, "more and more people are turning to medications to help with weight loss. But while weight loss drugs cause loss of muscle mass and function in addition to loss of body fat, our method may moderate these effects. There is a great need for a drug that can be combined with weight loss drugs, so that people who lose this weight will lose mostly fat mass and manage to maintain their muscle mass, so that not to cause health complications in the future."
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