Lose Weight? Build Muscle? Take A Pill and Stay on the Couch

2008-08-05 23:05:52 -

It works for mice, and there's a good chance it'll work in humans as well - a pill that makes even the most committed couch potato shape up like an athlete.

'The Exercise Pill' (www.TheExercisePill.com), as it was immediately dubbed around the world, is a drug developed by Schering-Plough. They call it AICAR and it's still in testing. But, oh, what results they're seeing in the lab.

Mice taking the drug for four weeks improved their running endurance by a whopping 44%, without a minute of exercise. The mice that took it could run on treadmills nearly 1.5 times as long as, and faster than untreated animals. Another group of mice that took a companion drug, GW1516, mixed with some exercise and saw a 70% performance improvement over mice that worked up a sweat but didn't get the drug.

'It's a little bit like a free lunch without the calories,' Dr. Ronald Evans, a senior author of the study, which appeared in the respected medical journal Cell, told the New York Times.

The research was absolutely top-tier. It had the support of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the government's own National Institutes of Health.

Schering-Plough is developing AICAR to prevent a complication of bypass surgery. While the company's research could drag on for years, the same chemical compound is already available from chemical supply companies. One source is charging $120/gram, which could mean one would have to have to spend thousands of dollars a day to gain the same benefits as seen in mice. For do-it-yourselfers, a 2003 scientific journal details a recipe for WG1516.

Could The Exercise Pill be in the travel bags of this summer's Olympic competitors? We may never know, as there's no way to test for it, yet. Dr. Evans is working on one now.

WebTalkerPR is presently using the domain (web address) www.TheExercisePill.com for advertising purposes, but it is available for purchase. Offers can be made via a link at that address.