Fintess in a pill?

[Shaolin-Akira]

i heard on the radio today, that doctors have located the acctual chemicals or somthing that help form and bulid up muscles, and hope to someday make a "pill form work-out". anyone else hear about this?

[Royal Dragon]

I supose it will work about as good as all those diet pills.

[Sharky]

all those hours in the gym, ad some fool pops a pill ands gets a s fit as me?

no, i ain' havin it.

[raving_limerick]

My cancer-biology teacher here at college just had a lecture today on how anything that alters the chemical concentration of growth factors adds a huge risk to the cells becoming cancerous.

Until we find out more details on how this will actually work, I'm going to forget it even happened.

[JasBourne]

CNN news article about "Couch Potato Pill"

' "It is possible it could become a drug of abuse because it would enhance the performance of athletes," he said. '

Har!

[HuangKaiVun]

Mitochondrial effects - I knew it.

When I was in medical school a few years ago, we talked about the dangers of messing with mitochondrial processes.

For those of you who don't know what "mitochondria" are, they are little organelles inside every cell in your body that take food and turn it into ENERGY. This process is called "respiration" - and it's why we need oxygen to live.

Many years ago, researchers tried to alter the dynamics of mitochondrial enzymes. The result was some lifethreating sickness on the part of laboratory subjects.

Now years later, we are toying with the same process albeit at a earlier level in the respiratory change. Calmodulin dependent kinase is an enzyme which is in every cell, and it is involved in all sorts of cellular processes. Messing with Calmodulin will screw up all sorts of cellular events down the line, leading right down to the mitochondria. Besides, CaMK and calcineurin are not just "muscle" enzymes - they have far reaching effects on the entirety of the living system (many of which we DON'T know about).

The thing about cellular respiration is that it's probably the most regulated aspect of our lives as human beings. Mess with that and you'll probably have a lot of trouble breathing the way those earlier subjects did.

[kungfu cowboy]

I am sure that real exercise positively stresses the body in multiple ways through multiple systems that no pill trying to mimic these effects can possibly ever hope to duplicate, especially important neurochemical/psycho-physiological events. What the hell is wrong with actually exercising anyway!?!? Maybe there are applications for this, but trying to be a fit-potato is pretty lame.

[Kristoffer]

the real answer lyes in cybernetics.

[Silumkid]

I have the feeling this pill won't get very far. Just like Huang said, there is a lot of stuff in the biological process we just haven't figured out yet. We have been trying to find out how to replicate hyperplasia for a long time, and we still haven't.

Besides, let's imagine this pill does get perfected and works. So people will start popping more pills, thinking they are getting something for nothing, but will end up getting injured trying to overextend themselves anyhow. Even a perfected pill or powder is no substitute for learning a skill, which I doubt will ever come in pill form.

Let the fatties have their fantasies. They eventually get broken.