"An exercise pill may be in the future for those incapable of working out"

[Sushi]

Not everyone can exercise. People with muscle-wasting diseases and movement disorders, the frail, the very obese and post-surgical patients are among those who face a significant challenge when it comes to working out....

But what if a drug could stimulate the body into producing some of the same effects of exercise —....Such a pill may be on the way. Several scientists are testing compounds that apparently can do this — and people wouldn’t even have to move at all to benefit.

“Our goal is to understand these circuits,” says Ronald Evans, director of the gene expression laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. “We are taking this concept and trying to develop a drug that can help us game the system that is naturally activated during exercise.”...
Ali Tavassoli, a professor of chemical biology at Britain’s University of Southampton, has discovered a drug known as compound 14 that works “by fooling cells into thinking they have run out of energy,” Tavassoli says. It does this through a series of molecular actions that spur cells into metabolizing sugar, which produces energy, he says....

 

[alex3619]

... but our cells actually have run out of energy. This might be the exact opposite of what we need in ME. There is a long way to go on the science.

 

[junkcrap50]

GWThese already exist and have been frequently used in studies. Look up the term "exercise mimetics". Two commonly studied ones are GW1516 (aka 516) and AICAR. They work by turning on AMPK, PPARs, and PGC-1 proteins and genes, which seems to be a different mechanism than what this article describes. You can even buy GW1516 from bodybuilding sites for use as a fat-loss drug. Both GW1517 and AICAR are banned substances by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

https://juicedmuscle.com/jmblog/content/exercise-mimetics-em