6 ms·

Maybe not a drug. But if the improvements in health come from bio chemical signals, it should be possible to activate those signals without engaging in exercise

by voat 1y ago

Maybe not a drug. But if the improvements in health come from bio chemical signals, it should be possible to activate those signals without engaging in exercise. Eventually?

DaveZale 1y ago
yes and no. A couple thousand myokines at work here. Even lactate, formerly regarded as simply a waste product, is one. But sure, a cocktail may be possible at some point, beyond getting a blood transfusion from someone fitter and maybe younger.
sctb 1y ago
Strictly speaking, any intervention other than exercise is going to give you a subset of the total stimulation. A drug acting on the tissues directly would bypass the neurological component, for example. If the idea is to avoid the effort of exercise, perhaps it would be worth considering the possibility that the effort itself is essential.
- Bnjoroge 1y ago
  not entirely true. you can have drugs that directly act on the respective receptors, either inhibit or excite them.
  - maccard 1y ago
    If we were good enough to have drugs that could work with that precision we’d eliminate an enormous category of things. The side effects are usually the scary things. We have drugs that can cure the symptoms of depression and anxiety - they just so happen to be insanely addictive, cause respiratory depression, loss of coordination, and you quickly build a tolerance to them.
gonzo41 1y ago
This is so bleak. Go for a walk.
- Loughla 1y ago
  Why? My best friend uses a wheelchair and has dexterity issues in his hands due to a stroke. Exercise for him is (a) expensive and (b) really really really painful. If he could take a pill that simulated this it would be amazing for his life.
  - raddan 1y ago
    I was struck this past week to the extent that even a mild physical impairment can cause. I overdid it last week on a run and I spent this week nursing a swollen knee. What kind of exercise to do without involving my knee? I lift weights sometimes, but I can’t do that every day, and it also does not give me the mood altering effect that a good run does. I was drawing a blank glumly in an armchair when my wife suggested swimming at the local pool with pull buoys (so that I can keep my knee immobilized). After a few experiments that felt more like drowning than swimming I finally got the hang of it. But it left me seriously worried about exercise in my future. After all, joint problems are likely going to happen again in my future. And I started to wonder: how do disabled folks do this? It must be incredibly difficult (and expensive!). I really am incredibly lucky across multiple fronts to have the life that I have.
    - navane 1y ago
      Cycling is really good as it doesn't strain joints, merely gently lubricates it. I broke my knee and was put on the bike real quick, as soon as I had enough mobility to make a full round, for rehabilitation.
      - toss1 1y ago
        Yup, +1 for cycling! For me, it's some ankle cartridge destruction from an old fracture that finally put a halt to my formerly extensive trail & XC running & recreational racing. But cycling is coming back to the core of my exercise program (Mountain/trails: really miss road biking but traffic & drivers' attitudes seem to hazardous now). And not expensive either - plenty of bikes on Craigslist good enough to not give you bad habits and still get good exercise, even decade+ old race bikes. It is really all about working with what capabilities you still have, and maximizing those. Even that may provide enough healing & fitness to get back to a bit of previously constrained activities.
socalgal2 1y ago
The article has an opinion on this > When I asked Ashley if it was possible to design a drug that mimicked the observed effects of exercise, he was emphatic that, no, this was not possible.
stuckinhell 1y ago
sooner than later glp + myostatin inhibitors seems to be a big winner. https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/72/Supplement_1/207-OR/149796/207-OR-Myostatin-Inhibition-Synergizes-with-GLP-1R https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/72/Supplement_...
tomalaci 1y ago
Steroids. You will be growing muscle while sitting on a couch, even better than someone that naturally trains. However, you very likely will develop asymetries or other weird complications because you didnt properly work out. My point is that, even though we might find even more ways to improve/modify our bodies, they will come with slew of risks that are just not worth it if you can achieve it naturally. On another note, I feel like there is severe muscle inflation in media which would distort how fit a person should be. You really do not need to kill yourself in the gym or hop on a some reddit-approved juices to get very fit. Just gotta experiment and find a comfortable full body workout that you can do consistently, like you brush your teeth every day.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y ago
  You get plenty of asymmetries working out too, it's natural. Don't think just weight lifting, think of: tennis, boxing, baseball
- samiv 1y ago
  Actually, that's not how steroids work. It's a common misconception that one can take "roids" and just sit on the sofa while munching on potato chips and get shredded and pack on muscle but in reality what the steroids do are to move ones natural limitations further away thus enabling larger muscle mass than naturally. But this still requires one to put in the work, i.e. the stimulus to trigger the muscle growth and to rest and eat properly.
  - retrac 1y ago
    They do work that way. Lots of studies show gains in muscle mass even with no excercise when people are on steroids. Consider average men who never excercise vs average women who never excercise. The men will have more muscle. That's what testosterone does, among other things. That's part of why steroids were and sometimes still are used medically for people with cancer and other wasting diseases. It makes them eat more (they're usually strongly appetite inducing) but they also just help develop muscles even if sedentary. (Of course it would be far more effective to also engage in high intensity resistance training.)
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mythrwy 1y ago
Yes we could also in potentially in the future manage to block pain signals when we stick our hand on hot stoves and that should be super!
vmg12 1y ago
It would take a lot of different drugs to simulate what exercise does. - Impact and stress strengthening the muscles, bones and tendons / ligaments - energy use that leads to better sleep - increased blood flow, development of new capillaries, stretching of blood vessels - if you exercise outside, exposure to sunlight - the release of all the associated neurochemicals I have a suspicion that anything designed to mimic exercise would hurt as much as the actual thing given that so many of the benefits of exercise involve damaging bone and tissue then repairing it

by voat 1y ago

Maybe not a drug. But if the improvements in health come from bio chemical signals, it should be possible to activate those signals without engaging in exercise. Eventually?

DaveZale 1y ago

yes and no. A couple thousand myokines at work here. Even lactate, formerly regarded as simply a waste product, is one. But sure, a cocktail may be possible at some point, beyond getting a blood transfusion from someone fitter and maybe younger.

sctb 1y ago

Strictly speaking, any intervention other than exercise is going to give you a subset of the total stimulation. A drug acting on the tissues directly would bypass the neurological component, for example. If the idea is to avoid the effort of exercise, perhaps it would be worth considering the possibility that the effort itself is essential.

Bnjoroge 1y ago
not entirely true. you can have drugs that directly act on the respective receptors, either inhibit or excite them.
- maccard 1y ago
  If we were good enough to have drugs that could work with that precision we’d eliminate an enormous category of things. The side effects are usually the scary things. We have drugs that can cure the symptoms of depression and anxiety - they just so happen to be insanely addictive, cause respiratory depression, loss of coordination, and you quickly build a tolerance to them.

gonzo41 1y ago

This is so bleak. Go for a walk.

Loughla 1y ago
Why? My best friend uses a wheelchair and has dexterity issues in his hands due to a stroke. Exercise for him is (a) expensive and (b) really really really painful. If he could take a pill that simulated this it would be amazing for his life.
- raddan 1y ago
  I was struck this past week to the extent that even a mild physical impairment can cause. I overdid it last week on a run and I spent this week nursing a swollen knee. What kind of exercise to do without involving my knee? I lift weights sometimes, but I can’t do that every day, and it also does not give me the mood altering effect that a good run does. I was drawing a blank glumly in an armchair when my wife suggested swimming at the local pool with pull buoys (so that I can keep my knee immobilized). After a few experiments that felt more like drowning than swimming I finally got the hang of it. But it left me seriously worried about exercise in my future. After all, joint problems are likely going to happen again in my future. And I started to wonder: how do disabled folks do this? It must be incredibly difficult (and expensive!). I really am incredibly lucky across multiple fronts to have the life that I have.
  - navane 1y ago
    Cycling is really good as it doesn't strain joints, merely gently lubricates it. I broke my knee and was put on the bike real quick, as soon as I had enough mobility to make a full round, for rehabilitation.
    - toss1 1y ago
      Yup, +1 for cycling! For me, it's some ankle cartridge destruction from an old fracture that finally put a halt to my formerly extensive trail & XC running & recreational racing. But cycling is coming back to the core of my exercise program (Mountain/trails: really miss road biking but traffic & drivers' attitudes seem to hazardous now). And not expensive either - plenty of bikes on Craigslist good enough to not give you bad habits and still get good exercise, even decade+ old race bikes. It is really all about working with what capabilities you still have, and maximizing those. Even that may provide enough healing & fitness to get back to a bit of previously constrained activities.

socalgal2 1y ago

The article has an opinion on this > When I asked Ashley if it was possible to design a drug that mimicked the observed effects of exercise, he was emphatic that, no, this was not possible.

stuckinhell 1y ago

sooner than later glp + myostatin inhibitors seems to be a big winner. https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/72/Supplement_1/207-OR/149796/207-OR-Myostatin-Inhibition-Synergizes-with-GLP-1R https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/72/Supplement_...

tomalaci 1y ago

Steroids. You will be growing muscle while sitting on a couch, even better than someone that naturally trains. However, you very likely will develop asymetries or other weird complications because you didnt properly work out. My point is that, even though we might find even more ways to improve/modify our bodies, they will come with slew of risks that are just not worth it if you can achieve it naturally. On another note, I feel like there is severe muscle inflation in media which would distort how fit a person should be. You really do not need to kill yourself in the gym or hop on a some reddit-approved juices to get very fit. Just gotta experiment and find a comfortable full body workout that you can do consistently, like you brush your teeth every day.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y ago
You get plenty of asymmetries working out too, it's natural. Don't think just weight lifting, think of: tennis, boxing, baseball
samiv 1y ago
Actually, that's not how steroids work. It's a common misconception that one can take "roids" and just sit on the sofa while munching on potato chips and get shredded and pack on muscle but in reality what the steroids do are to move ones natural limitations further away thus enabling larger muscle mass than naturally. But this still requires one to put in the work, i.e. the stimulus to trigger the muscle growth and to rest and eat properly.
- retrac 1y ago
  They do work that way. Lots of studies show gains in muscle mass even with no excercise when people are on steroids. Consider average men who never excercise vs average women who never excercise. The men will have more muscle. That's what testosterone does, among other things. That's part of why steroids were and sometimes still are used medically for people with cancer and other wasting diseases. It makes them eat more (they're usually strongly appetite inducing) but they also just help develop muscles even if sedentary. (Of course it would be far more effective to also engage in high intensity resistance training.)

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mythrwy 1y ago

Yes we could also in potentially in the future manage to block pain signals when we stick our hand on hot stoves and that should be super!

vmg12 1y ago

It would take a lot of different drugs to simulate what exercise does. - Impact and stress strengthening the muscles, bones and tendons / ligaments - energy use that leads to better sleep - increased blood flow, development of new capillaries, stretching of blood vessels - if you exercise outside, exposure to sunlight - the release of all the associated neurochemicals I have a suspicion that anything designed to mimic exercise would hurt as much as the actual thing given that so many of the benefits of exercise involve damaging bone and tissue then repairing it