Great news for those who want to live healthy lives but are not the biggest fans of exercise!
According to new research, we may be close to creating a pill that offers people all the same effects of living an active lifestyle without the need to sweat!
Scientists from Baylor and Stanford Universities state that they have reached quite an important step towards putting some of those amazing benefits of working out into medicine anyone could take!
Dr. Yong Xu, a Baylor professor of Pediatrics and Dr. Jonathan Long, an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Stanford have identified a molecule blood is able to produce while exercising and that in the lab, has reduced obesity and food intake in mice, as per the Baylor College of Medicine.
Xu explains that “Regular exercise has been proven to help with weight loss, regulate appetite and improve metabolic profile, especially for people who are overweight and obese. If we can understand the mechanism by which exercise can trigger these benefits, then we’re closer to helping many people improve their health.”
Long goes on to add that “We wanted to understand how exercise works at the molecular level to be able to capture some of its benefits. For example, older or frail people who cannot exercise enough, may one day benefit from taking a medication that can help slow down osteoporosis, heart disease or other conditions.”
The two researchers have found an amino acid known as Lac-Phe.
Upon giving lab mice fed diets high in fat the appropriate doses of this amino acid, they observed a 50 percent decrease in food intake for up to 12 hours after, Baylor shared.
The scientists also discovered that humans, as well as racehorses, all produce the same amino acid whenever they go through significant physical effort.
Xu told Baylor that “Our next steps include finding more details about how Lac-Phe mediates its effects in the body, including the brain. Our goal’s to learn to modulate this exercise pathway for therapeutic interventions.”
