Drug Tricks Body into 'Thinking' You Exercised

While steroids can give the boost in muscle pow­er that so of­ten tempts ath­letes to abuse these drugs, re­search­ers say there has­n’t been a tar­geted drug ca­pa­ble of build­ing the en­dur­ance needed to run a mar­a­thon or ride a bike through the Alps.

Now there might be, sug­gests a new study with mice. And that’s cre­at­ing both hope and worry.

A study with mice suggests the exis­tence of drugs that trick the body into "be­liev­ing" it has exer­cised.

The study found that a drug de­vel­oped for the treat­ment of met­a­bol­ic dis­ease, when tak­en in com­bina­t­ion with ex­er­cise, gives mice the abil­ity to run far­ther than ex­er­cise alone can. And an­oth­er chem­i­cal en­dowed mice with great­er en­dur­ance, even with­out the work­out.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY