It's a little bit like a free lunch without the calories

That's how one researcher at the Salk Institute in San Diego described 2 new drugs that trick muscles into thinking they have been working out. Well, at least that's true for mouse muscles. According to an article in the New York Times, the drugs "did wonders for the athletic endurance of couch potato mice. One drug, known as Aicar, increased the mice's endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment. A second drug, GW1516, supercharged the mice to a 75 percent increase in endurance but had to be combined with exercise to have any effect."

Human bodies, the article says, control muscle tone with the same underlying genes as do mice. So if the drugs work and prove to be safe, they could help people who are too frail to exercise and those with health problems, such as diabetes, that are improved with exercise. Of course, the drugs could also be used to improve healthy athletes, giving them an unfair edge in competition. With an eye on that, a test to detect whether an athlete has taken either one has been made available to the World Anti-Doping Agency, which prepares the list of forbidden substances for the International Olympic Committee. Read the full article at http://tinyurl.com/6ou7qt

RoadBikeRider.com Newsletter
Issue No. 355 - 08/07/08: Rev Up for Fall Rides
ISSN 1536-4143