Doctors Have Just Invented A Drink That Gives You The Benefits If Exercise!

So..Imagine getting all the benefits of exercise, without having to actually move!

Michigan Medicine researchers studying a class of naturally occurring protein called Sestrin have found that it can mimic many of exercise’s beneficial effects in flies and mice. The findings—which were published in Nature Communications this week—could eventually help scientists combat muscle wasting due to aging and other causes.

“Researchers have previously observed that Sestrin accumulates in muscle following exercise,” said Myungjin Kim, a research assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology. Kim, working with Professor Jun Hee Lee and a team of researchers, wanted to know more about the protein’s apparent link to exercise. Their first step was to encourage a bunch of flies to work out.

Taking advantage of Drosophilaflies’ normal instinct to climb up and out of a test tube, their collaborators developed a type of fly treadmill. Using it, the team trained the flies for three weeks and compared the running and flying ability of normal flies with that of flies bred to lack the ability to make Sestrin. “Flies can usually run around four to six hours at this point and the normal flies’ abilities improved over that period,” says Lee. “The flies without Sestrin did not improve with exercise.”

Could Sestrin supplements be on the horizon?

Not quite YET, says Lee. “Sestrins are not small molecules, but we are working to find small molecule modulators of Sestrin.”

Additionally, adds Kim, scientists still don’t know how exercise produces Sestrin in the body. “This is very critical for future study and could lead to a treatment for people who cannot exercise.”

(photo Getty Images)