Little Exercise, Big Benefit
About four weeks ago, around the time the elliptical machine in my basement decided to break, I resolved it was time for me to (begrudgingly) start running again. In the four weeks since, I have built myself up from a labored breathing after only eight tenths of a mile to a more modest pant after running nearly three. Make no mistake: I hate running. I hate thinking about it, I hate warming up for it, and I really hate actually doing it. It’s only afterward, when I realize the benefit of the exercise, that I can actually feel good that I did it. And before any jogging advocates email me and indicate how I can improve my stride and build enough endurance to really make the experience more pleasurable, I implore you to reconsider; I am and always will be squarely in the “hate” camp.
That said, no other exercise gets me into shape more quickly. It gives me reason to hate it even more. I suppose it’s one of life’s cruel ironies that something I hate doing so much could be so good for me. I often wonder to myself (or aloud when I’m running, much to the dismay of passers-by), if there was some way I could get the benefit from my workout with less effort on my part. It is a paradoxical and unrealistic request given everything we know about exercising, but, believe it or not, there may soon be a pill for it.
A California research team doing tests on mice may have identified a method to activate compounds in the body that would increase fat burning ability and dramatically increase endurance, according to Boston.com’s White Coat Notes from Thursday, July 31st. The study, published on the same day in the journal “Cell,” shows that the PPAR-delta master gene, responsible for controlling metabolism and muscle fibers, can be reprogrammed to burn fat and increase exercise endurance using only drugs.
The study obviously has several moral and ethical implications, so much so that in anticipation of the Olympics, scientists in conjunction with the World Anti-Doping Agency have concocted a test for blood and urine that can test for even the tiniest traces of the two substances that make up the drug cocktail. The suspicion is that a lab somewhere may be able to reproduce the chemicals for competitive athletes, giving them an unfair advantage in competition. Any broken record is reason enough for suspicion, as Dara Torres is quickly discovering after she broke a US swimming record recently.
The other downside to the pill is getting the dosage right. According to the study, the month-long trial in the mice would translate to about a three-year regimen in humans. In treating diseases such as obesity, it might be too long a wait.
The process is activated through use of two drugs, AICR and GW1516, the former of which is currently licensed by Schering-Plough to help control bleeding in the human heart. It will probably be some time, however, before clinical trials of the two drugs in tandem can commence, and even longer before scientists understand the implications of changing how muscles function in the body. And I don’t know about you, but the thought of taking one or more pills for the rest of my life to maintain a svelte figure and a higher level of endurance isn’t appealing to me. Perhaps, if proven to be safe, whatever company decides to produce this drug can dangle it as a carrot to Mike Adams, sponsor of the $10,000 health challenge to big pharma.
The fundamental philosophical question is how far we’re willing to push to have something else do the work for us? We’re developing pills to make us younger, pills to make us healthier, pills to put us in better shape. What happened to eating right? Exercising? Scheduling enough time in what seems to be our infinitely busy lives to use the tools that nature gave us rather than looking for the quick fix? As time goes on, it seems more choices are developed by the pharmaceutical industry to circumvent a natural process to give us more time. As we get it, however, we lose sight the one basic principal through which appreciation of that time is developed: our patience.
I think I’ll take that run now.
