I read an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times today about how scientists have found a drug that produces similar physiological affects to exercise. Mind you, this isn’t necessarily equivalent to steroids or other PEDs which really take exercise to bring out their full benefit….this pill IS exercise (at least as far as the physiological response). Kinda freaky. In a related article, Ronald M. Evans, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator who led the study on the pill, said
This is a drug that is like pharmacological exercise.
In his experiments on mice that did no exercise, the chemical compound, known as AICAR, allowed them to run 44% farther on a treadmill than those that did not receive the drug. This has huge ramifications for obesity and metabolic disorders but more closely related to the content of this site…could this be the latest and greatest performance enhancing drug? Not so fast….at least not for speed-power events. The drug appears to change the physical composition of muscle of the sugar-burning fast-twitch fibers to fat-burning slow-twitch ones. Perhaps we’ll see a 3:00 miler?
Discuss entry