CDoes a pill really mimic all the beneficial effects of exercise? You’d think so from some of the stories about drugs that “can make going to the gym unnecessary”. There was another result of this a few weeks ago, when researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark announced that a drug called LaKe “brings the body into a metabolic state corresponding to running 10 km at high speed on an empty stomach”. But what is going on here? Even if a pill can replicate parts of what exercise does for us, how useful is it really?
First things first: the most commonly accepted term for drugs like LaKe is “mimetics” because what they do is, as a rule, mimic the biological effects of exercise without the need to actually sweat. The idea has been around for a while: in 2008San Diego’s Salk Institute introduced the world to a drug called GW501516 (516 for short), which signals key genes to burn fat instead of sugar, helping rodent test subjects run longer without hitting the proverbial wall.
In later tests, a pair of rodents nicknamed Couch Potato Mouse and Lance Armstrong Mouse, both raised on the same diet of fatty, sugary grains, did the same amount of daily physical activity, but Lance Armstrong Mouse was dosed with 516 — and markedly increased its endurance, while remaining much leaner than its control counterpart. A variant of 516 quickly ended up on the black market as a banned drug known as Endurabol, and the World Anti-Doping Agency issued warnings to athletes that it was unsafe – but many more imitators were already in development.
Compound 14, first announced in 2015began development as a way to treat other diseases, before researchers discovered that it could reduce fasting blood glucose levels, improve glucose tolerance and promote weight loss in obese mice. Since then we have also seen research on Lac-Phea chemical normally produced in the body by resistance training, and a new molecule known as SLU-PP-332which boosts metabolism and endurance, helping rodents run 50% further than they could before. The latter, she principal researcher say, tells skeletal muscle to make the changes typically elicited by endurance exercise. It has the potential to help dieters maintain muscle mass during weight loss, or to avoid it in older people sarcopenia as their bodies respond less strongly to exercise.
LaKe is still in the rat study stage of development, so it is not certain that the results will translate to humans. But what it seems to do is to first cause a rapid surge of lactate in the body – mimicking the kind of effect you’d typically see after a bout of high-intensity exercise – and then a more gradual increase of a chemical called beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB). BHB is a ketone, or a chemical synthesized from fatty acids in the liver to provide the body with energy when it doesn’t have enough glucose – this is where the idea of ”running on an empty stomach” comes from.
Between them, these two changes do appear to lower the level of free fatty acids in the bloodstream and also suppress appetite – which are effects you’d expect from fasted exercise (exercising without eating beforehand) and can help reduce the risk of conditions like heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes over the long term. And (again, in rats) the pill appears to show no signs of toxicity – unlike early versions of 516, which promote rapid growth of cancer cells in their rodent subjects. Promising stuff, then – but is it really that simple?
Well, it’s hard to say. Exercise affects nearly all of the body’s systems, often in complex ways that we still don’t understand (the largest research program dedicated to understanding its impact at the molecular level, using nearly 2,600 volunteers, is still ongoing). Together, many of the drugs mentioned above may be able to mimic any number of these—perhaps working with already government-approved interventions like Ozempic to encourage a host of benefits. But any supplement has limitations: exercise is a whole-body experience, with downstream effects that include everything from improved bone density to better sleep. It improves mood and self-esteem while reducing stress, and appears to have properties that protect against dementia. All of these impacts come from complex interactions between any number of biological effects—but even if science could mimic them all with pills, it would be much harder to recreate the psychological benefits of running a 5k with friends, or running a achieving a new personal best in the squat.
We are still a long way from finding safe drugs that can replicate exercise’s most beneficial effects in humans, but when they do exist, they are likely to be most useful for people who are elderly, sick, infirm, or otherwise unable to exercise properly. thing. They could help people recovering from surgery — or astronauts who, even if they exercise in orbit, suffer bone loss and muscle wasting because their bodies work less hard in microgravity. For the rest of us, the benefits of a gentle walk or a handful of squats are hard to mimic with pills, and (fairly) easy to get without. One day we might be able to take our exercise in pill form – but right now it’s much easier to take the road.
