Optimal Being

Scientists are intrigued by a drug that appears to imbue mice with the benefits of exercise without actually getting physical activity — but as you'd imagine, there are caveats, so don't throw out your workout clothes just yet. As a  University of Florida press release  about the new research declares, the newly developed compound SLU-PP-332 led obese mice to lose weight by apparently convincing their bodies to go into marathon training mode, leading to a faster metabolism and more energy and endurance, and all without actually exercising. "This compound is basically telling skeletal muscle to make the same changes you see during endurance training," Thomas Burris, a UF pharmacy professor who led the research, said in the school's press release. SLU-PP-332 purports to achieve this by targeting what are known as EFF proteins that activate the body's most "energy-gobbling" tissues, such as the brain, the heart, and other muscles. ERRs are naturally rel...

  Calorie restriction or caloric restriction, usually abbreviated to CR, is a strategy proven to extend healthy, average, and maximum life span in many short lived species, including mice and rats, and at least healthy and average life span in primates. In research papers it is more usually called dietary restriction, abbreviated to DR, and rodent studies conducted over the past 20 years have reliably demonstrated up to a 40% increase in maximum life span through life-long DR. These benefits to health and longevity have been shown in animal studies to roughly scale with the degree of calorie restriction imposed, but there is good reason to believe that any gain in primate (and especially human) life span through CR is much more modest than that observed in mice. The calorie restriction response exists in near all species tested to date, and probably evolved very early in the history of life on Earth as a way to increase the chances of surviving seasonal famines or other periodic sh...