A team of researchers at Harvard Medical School claim they have created a pill that has the same effect on the body as exercise does without requiring us to move a muscle. They are looking into the creation of a pill form of irisin, a hormone that is made naturally in the body during exercise.
It has been suggested that irisin, which is found in muscle cells, and known to spur on the burning of calories during exercise, could potentially become a treatment for obesity. We know that the level of this hormone in the body increases while we exercise and in turn helps to control blood sugar levels and increases the amount of energy we expend and the team suggests that the drug could potentially be used to treat diabetes and even cancer. The study is published online in Nature.
Consuming the pill form of this hormone would help the body to produce healthy brown fat, which in turn helps us to lose weight. Unfortunately we have less brown fat as we get older since white fat replaces brown fat as we age and is typically deposited around the waist.
In order to examine whether or not an increase in irisin could produce the same effects that exercise would, obese, pre-diabetic, sedentary mice were injected with small amounts of irisin and after 10 days the mice gained control over blood glucose levels and lost a modest amount of weight. The study’s author suggests that a greater amount of weight would have been lost if the hormone had been administered over a longer period of time.
This is a very interesting development but please don’t sit around waiting for this pill to be licensed. You are going to need to join a gym and shake that booty if you are going to shift those extra pounds!