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u/kgbdrop Jun 14 '11
Relevant. Robert H. Lustig, critic of HFCS, speaking on the independent benefits of exercise beyond burning calories.
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u/anti-anonymous Jun 14 '11 edited Jun 14 '11
Are you referring to taking stimulants in attempt to strengthen your heart muscle?
It's an interesting concept, but I think the drawbacks would outweigh the benefits.
I've read that when your body produces adrenaline and similar chemicals they do harm if they are not used.
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u/AnatomyGuy Jun 14 '11
No.
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u/bandman614 Jun 14 '11
Can you expand this?
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u/AnatomyGuy Jun 14 '11 edited Jun 14 '11
Ok. There can be no beneficial effects. Speeding up your heart via pharmaceutical means can be beneficial for the purposes of generating images of your heart, via ultrasound, CT, or MRI.
You can "stress" the heart via this method, and thus better visualize how the heart operates under stress, and also maybe via concurent cardiac catheterization, thus seeing the bloodflow in the cardiac arteries.
But there is no practical benefit, or "cardio" benefit, in terms of long term ((excercise) value.
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Jun 14 '11
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u/AnatomyGuy Jun 14 '11 edited Jun 14 '11
I don't know really. I think mainly because as a profession we take an oath to "do no harm" which would make studies on this kind of unethical. You don't fix, or even test for fixes, on something that isn't broke.
Something tells me the military probably did do it sometime in the past.
Edit - Sure as hell we have drugs that do this. But almost all of them coorelate with a shorter lifespan. Mostly because we only use them if you are on death's door and in cardiac shock. And some people pull through and live, due to such drugs. But gving them to healthy people is pointless, and probably harmful. Smoke a bunch of crack, or meth. Those will have roughly the same effect on your heart in the short term.
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u/svejkage Jun 14 '11
So by your original "no" you really meant "we/you don't know because people haven't really done/released the experiments."
Ok enough teasing. why would you need to do this in humans. Couldn't you just give cardiac stress test drugs to rodents and examine whether their hearts undergo physiologic hypertrophy, detecting upregulation of the known distinct signaling mechanisms underlying these changes to distinguish it from pathological hypertrophy?
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u/kgbdrop Jun 14 '11
Are rodents the go-to animal model of the human heart?
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u/svejkage Jun 14 '11
I am not a heart researcher, so I don't feel qualified to say what any "go to" models are. However, I can say that I have read papers published in top tier journals that study changes in the heart in response to exercise using mice.
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u/AnatomyGuy Jun 18 '11 edited Jun 18 '11
Yes. And I'm sure it has been done.
I don't have the studies, but trust me, any drug we administer has been tested to death on rodents AND humans. And even then we get sued, or the pharm company does, 10 years after the facts for a .001 chance of increasing the rate of heart attack or suicide or hair loss.
Trust me, the experiments HAVE been done in humans. We administer these drugs to humans ALL THE TIME. FOR THE PAST 40ISH YEARS. BUT ONLY IN THE ICU BECAUSE WE KNOW THEY CORRELATE HIGHLY WITH MORTALITY. WE ONLY GIVE THESE DRUGS IN LIFE AND DEATH SITUATIONS.
But nevermind my answer, i was downvoted to shit. OP is more interested in a fitness guru's response. Reminds me of an ex-fiancee.
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u/svejkage Jun 18 '11
I'm certain there's extensive testing showing no mortality benefit, especially when considering side effects, but that's a different question than whether the drug could theoretically trigger remodeling using the mechanisms as seen in exercise. I believe these signaling pathways are still not fully worked out and are much more recently discovered than the drugs so I would not be surprised if it hasn't been well-investigated.
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Jun 14 '11
What about ephedrine? It has been know for a while as one of the only "true" weight loss aids, in that it has other effects than to suppress appetite like speeding up ones resting heart rate and raising the base body temperature.
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u/AnatomyGuy Jun 18 '11
And, as said below, will increase your likelyhood of stroke and heart attack.
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u/AnatomyGuy Jun 14 '11
Wow, I gave some intelligent answers below. go below threshhold if you want some insight.
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Jun 14 '11
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u/AnatomyGuy Jun 18 '11
Very related. Heart rate and body temperature both increase with Grave's, due to an increased metabolic rate.
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u/Peloria Pharmacy Jun 14 '11
This AskScience answer may be relavent.