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

Since M.E. patients would likely have some muscle atrophy in the first place, maybe the pill would would just produce something more like normal muscle mass in those who took it (instead of huge muscles). I'm not really sure if extra muscle mass confers additional strength without exercise (as @Creekside mentioned). It's interesting, though, that the mice seemed to show increased stamina, which I thought was more of a cardiovascular / pulmonary thing. Are weightlifters great runners, for example?
 
I managed to find it.

I think there is a break in the logic in the article, which it ends up by explaining anyway. The exercise bit is clearly there to sell the idea because so many idiots are getting people to exercise whether or not it is good for them.

The problem is this.
1. Exercise has about 6 beneficial effects, together with some drawbacks.
2. There are new drugs that seem to produce some of these beneficial effects, but
3. Mostly in short term experiments in mice and under conditions that might well not apply when used in humans and
4. We already have lots of old drugs that produce some of these beneficial effects more specifically - like reducing diabetes or osteoporosis.

So, as one of the scientists points out, “To say ‘exercise mimetic’ as though you can capture exercise in a pill is absurd,” says Spiegelman. it makes more sense to go for the old type of drug that targets the effects in their own right and forget about being buzzy and saying it is exercise in a pill.

There also seem to be some seriously bad effect of these exercise drugs:

But after two weeks, although the muscles of the mice still looked good, the cognitive effects were “horrible”. The animals had increased inflammation in their brains and performed worse in a maze. When you exercise, your body distributes the benefits over time in a way that’s tailored to your own physiology, says van Praag. “That’s a tall order for a pill.”
 
I was always under the impression that body builders lacked endurance?

Muscle Volume Continued – Mitochondria to Actin Myosin Ratio

A trend has been discovered regarding the ratio of contents inside muscle cells between bodybuilders and endurance runners. That is, bodybuilders contain a greater amount of actin myosin fibers while runners contain a greater amount of mitochondria. This is because runners are in a constant state of oxygen restriction while bodybuilders are in burst states of high tension.

Since muscle cell expansion is a slow process itself, bombarding your body with endurance running will metabolically trigger a greater need for additional mitochondria than your weight training signals more action myosin fibers. And, since there is a volume dependency more mitochondria may be created at the cost of actin myosin fibers.
Click to expand...

https://www.bestworkoutsupplementsblog.com/running-and-building-muscle/
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
4. We already have lots of old drugs that produce some of these beneficial effects more specifically - like reducing diabetes or osteoporosis.
Click to expand...

I know there are some drugs that stop your body breaking down old bone cells (as you'll know, there's normally a turnover) but it's unclear whether that leaves you with bone of better quality and IIRC the research indicates that there's generally not much effect on reducing fractures - plus there can be horrible effects of permanent pain (once in the body, you can't get the drug out again).

Whereas if you were activating some sort of quasi-exercise channel, maybe you'd get a more natural effect on the bone?
 
Sasha said:
Whereas if you were activating some sort of quasi-exercise channel, maybe you'd get a more natural effect on the bone?
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As far as I know the effect of exercise on bone is through physical force stimulating osteocytes. My colleague Andy Pitsillides worked on this in bird wings for some time. A pill is not going to generate any physical force on bone. I didn't;t see anything in the paper about effects on osteoporosis.

Presumably for PWME we are looking for a mechanism that strengthens bone without actually putting physical force on it. The drugs we have may not be perfect but that is the basis they have been developed on all along - trying to find a way to increase bone without actually needing exercise. So I cannot see what calling this approach an exercise pill does to help. We are still going to be looking for what we were looking for before.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
My guess is that having bulkier more powerful muscles must have an important health downside
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I knew there was some reason why I was built like a stick insect.

As far as bone density is concerned, I always understood it to be micro-impacts that promoted it rather than muscle usage. As someone whose hips have been deemed to be (consistently) in the osteopenia range (1.4 sd below mean), that puzzled me as I walked a moderate amount.​
 
Graham said:
I knew there was some reason why I was built like a stick insect.

As far as bone density is concerned, I always understood it to be micro-impacts that promoted it rather than muscle usage. As someone whose hips have been deemed to be (consistently) in the osteopenia range (1.4 sd below mean), that puzzled me as I walked a moderate amount.​
Click to expand...
I've read it's actually both.
 
Graham said:
I always understood it to be micro-impacts that promoted it rather than muscle usage. As someone whose hips have been deemed to be (consistently) in the osteopenia range (1.4 sd below mean), that puzzled me as I walked a moderate amount.
Click to expand...
I think walking is considered too low-impact to be much use (as opposed to running, jumping and hopping).
 
Sasha said:
I think walking is considered too low-impact to be much use (as opposed to running, jumping and hopping).
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And I thought that running etc. was too high impact because we, who wear shoes, hit the ground with our heels, potentially causing a build-up of damage to the knee joint especially.
 
When I was a lad underground platforms had speak your weight machines for a penny.

I have always thought that they should now have jiggling machines so that elderly ladies and gents could stand on a similar metal plate for a minute and be subjected to repeated shock waves to strengthen the bones. It never caught on but it would have been pretty similar to what my colleague Andy did to turkey wing bones to make them stronger.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
I have always thought that they should now have jiggling machines so that elderly ladies and gents could stand on a similar metal plate for a minute and be subjected to repeated shock waves to strengthen the bones.
Click to expand...

But these do exist, don't they? Vibration plates? The evidence doesn't seem very good, though.

I also think there should be external equipment that gives some of the benefits of exercise to people who can't do it.
 
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