Exercise is great. But wouldn’t it be even greater if your muscles could get all the benefits of exercise without you having to do any work?
That maybe sounds like the kind of claim you’d get from a small advert in the back of an disreputable magazine. But it might just become an improbable reality, thanks to scientists at the University of Sydney.
Their research, as published in Cell Metabolism, has identified 1,000 molecular changes that occur in our muscles when we work out. The next step, Wired ponders, could be to identify the most important of these changes and recreate them with drugs.
Professor David James told Wired, “Exercise is the most powerful therapy for many human diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and neurological disorders.”
“However, for many people, exercise isn’t a viable treatment option… This means it is essential we find ways of developing drugs that mimic the benefits of exercise.”