A drug that researchers at the Harvard Medical School are developing could jump-start couch potatoes, getting them off their big behinds and into gymnasiums.
The drug, which is being tested on mice, switches on an appetite-regulating hormone in the brain, causing the mice to double their amount of physical activity. America is in dire need of such a drug because of the so-called “obesity time bomb” looming: The National Center for Health Studies says that 65 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese, with weight trends continuing to rise.
The drug makes the brain sensitive to the appetite-regulating hormone leptin. In tests, it doubled the metabolic rate in mice, spontaneously increasing their levels of exercise while decreasing their calorie appetites by about 30 percent. The blood glucose levels in the mice, which were bred to be obese and severely diabetic, became normal without any change in diet.
Study author Christian Bjorbaek, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told Forbes, “This gives us the opportunity to search for drugs that might induce the desire or will to voluntarily exercise.”
The blood sugar level turnaround was accomplished through the drug’s ability to restore leptin sensitivity to a single class of brain cells. “Just the receptors in this little group of neurons are sufficient to do the job,” Bjorbaek said.
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