"Exercise in a pill" - potential for ME/CFS?

Sasha

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
This (mostly paywalled) New Scientist article says:

New Scientist said:
Researchers are developing medicines that replicate the health benefits of exercise. In the process, they’re gaining insights into how to treat currently untreatable diseases.

I've read the whole article and it's interesting. I'm very sorry but I'm too tired to summarise it properly! But basically, scientists have used drugs on mice that give them the health benefits of exercise. There are concerns about impacts on the mice from long-term use and no apparent claim that a single pill would give all the varied benefits in humans, but still!

Two obvious questions in relation to ME/CFS:

(1) Could such a pill(s) have the potential for making us more functional?

(2) Long-term lack of exercise puts PwME at risk of bad things as we get old, including osteoporosis, heart issues, etc. Could such a pill(s) help protect us?

Here's a older (2017), non-paywalled article on the same topic but obviously not as up-to-date.

Discuss! :)
 
It could be an easy and convenient way to induce PEM.

Based on the 'free' bit it doesn't appear to do anything other than make mice exercise more - for all we know it could be causing them to hallucinate cats.

This approach may not be ideal for the bedbound (unless they like cats)
 
It could be an easy and convenient way to induce PEM.

Based on the 'free' bit it doesn't appear to do anything other than make mice exercise more - for all we know it could be causing them to hallucinate cats.

This approach may not be ideal for the bedbound (unless they like cats)

The pill doesn't enable you to exercise more - it enables you to have the physiological benefits of exercise without moving.

Hence my interest! :)
 
The pill doesn't enable you to exercise more - it enables you to have the physiological benefits of exercise without moving.

Hence my interest! :)
This
The story begins in 2002, when Evans, a biologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, performed some experiments involving mice and exercise wheels. He fed a drug known as GW1516 to unfit mice, expecting to see modest effects on their fat metabolism. But tests showed that mice which had been given the drug could run twice as far on their wheels as ones that hadn’t. “It was an amazing moment,” says Evans. Couch-potato mice had been transformed into endurance runners.
does not say it improved any health markers - what it says is that after taking the pill the mice could do more exercise.
 
I cannot get beyond the snippet but:

It seems that the drug they started with stimulates muscle bulk growth. I don't see that as being a particularly useful health benefit unless you want to do sport.

It is carcinogenic.

It has been around for twenty years and is banned in sport.

My guess is that having bulkier more powerful muscles must have an important health downside otherwise we would have evolved to have big muscles without needing to train (like crocodiles that spend 99% of their time doing nothing).

The only health benefits of exercise that interest me are better life expectancy in terms of cardiovascular risk and maybe preserved bone density, although I am doubtful that that is such a big issue for most people.
 
Can anyone find this article in the print edition? I can’t so far - the date of the piece doesn’t correspond with magazine publication dates. If it’s in the magazine, then one could access the article with a library app.
 
I cannot get beyond the snippet but:

It seems that the drug they started with stimulates muscle bulk growth. I don't see that as being a particularly useful health benefit unless you want to do sport.

It is carcinogenic.

It has been around for twenty years and is banned in sport.

The article talks about a variety of drugs (I shouldn't have posted this when I'm so tired and can't summarise - so sorry!).

The only health benefits of exercise that interest me are better life expectancy in terms of cardiovascular risk and maybe preserved bone density, although I am doubtful that that is such a big issue for most people.

I think it's a massive concern for PwME because so many of us can barely move and are going into old age having had zero exercise, for decades. There's lots of research on the huge disbenefits of lack of exercise.
 
Abstract
Exercise is among the most effective interventions for age-associated mobility decline and metabolic dysregulation. Although long-term endurance exercise promotes insulin sensitivity and expands respiratory capacity, genetic components and pathways mediating the metabolic benefits of exercise have remained elusive. Here, we show that Sestrins, a family of evolutionarily conserved exercise-inducible proteins, are critical mediators of exercise benefits. In both fly and mouse models, genetic ablation of Sestrins prevents organisms from acquiring metabolic benefits of exercise and improving their endurance through training. Conversely, Sestrin upregulation mimics both molecular and physiological effects of exercise, suggesting that it could be a major effector of exercise metabolism. Among the various targets modulated by Sestrin in response to exercise, AKT and PGC1α are critical for the Sestrin effects in extending endurance. These results indicate that Sestrin is a key integrating factor that drives the benefits of chronic exercise to metabolism and physical endurance.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13442-5
 
If that is true, then a key question would be whether what translates into benefits for non-ME/CFS people might potentially translate into harms for people with ME/CFS.
Maybe, but that's why I'm interested in people's views. I was wondering if it was worth putting it forward for that research prioritising thing.
 
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