TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS — With technology making our lives easier on almost a daily basis, someone had to come up with the idea.

Lose weight and become more fit at the same time, all without dieting or exercise. Just take a pill.

It sounds like something you’d find in an ad, or bannered across the cover, of one of the supermarket tabloids, along with the latest misadventures of celebrities and space aliens.

But researchers at respected institutions now are working on such a drug, so far restricted to laboratory mice.

Local people who work with dieting and exercise said that until such a “miracle pill” has been proven in people, it’s best to stick to the tried and true methods – eat healthy food, control your portions, and exercise regularly.

A recent study said the drug in question might help treat obesity, diabetes, and people with medical conditions that keep them from exercising, according to the Associated Press.

“We have exercise in a pill,” said Ron Evans, an author of the study. “With no exercise, you can take a drug and chemically mimic it.”

Evans, of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, reported the results in a paper published online by the journal Cell.

According to the study, sedentary mice that took the drug for four weeks burned more calories and had less fat than untreated mice. When tested on a treadmill, they could run about 44 percent farther and 23 percent longer.

On mice that did exercise training, a second drug made their workouts more effective at boosting endurance. After a month of exercising while taking that drug, the mice could run 68 percent longer and 70 percent farther than mice that exercised but did not take the drug.

Both drugs have been studied by researchers for other uses. The no-exercise drug is in late-stage human testing by Schering-Plough Corp. on Kenilworth, N.J., which developed it to see if it can prevent a complication of heart bypass surgery.

Reservatrol, a substance being studied for anti-aging effects, also has been reported to enable mice to run farther before exhaustion.

But the drugs in the new study appear to act more specifically on a process in muscles that boosts endurance,” according to the AP story.

Dr. Mark Giese, chairman of the Department of Health and Kinesiology at Northeastern State University, said he has yet to see evidence of a substitute for exercise as the best method of living healthy and keeping fit.

“The idea, of course, is to make the status of your muscle tissue better,” he said. “We want people to eat better, balanced portions yet we want them to be able to exercise.”

He said frequently diet pills are touted as letting people achieve the desired results by doing little else but taking them. Some of these plans have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, some haven’t.

There also are a number of diet programs that sell portion-controlled foods. Giese said these low-calorie meals can be effective as long as a person follows the program and doesn’t eat outside foods. But when they start taking lunch hours out, eating Sunday dinner at grandma’s, or otherwise straying from the regimen, the weight usually comes back.

“To make your muscle tissue better, you have to do certain things,” he said.

One is to increase your efficiency at burning calories. Fit people tend to burn more calories than unfit people.

Giese cited a program that measured the effects of exercise on people, doing biopsies of their muscle tissue before and after.

“After 16 weeks you could see very striking changes in muscle tone,” he said.

Participants showed an increase in mitochondrial structure and density.

That’s good news for people who like to eat as well as exercise.

“Fit people can eat incredible amounts of calories, many more than unfit people, but their muscle capacity, their engine, is very fit,” Giese said. “Eating is a habit. You can overeat and you can undereat.”

He doubts similar results can be achieved without exercise.

“A pill doesn’t change your muscle tissue,” he said.

The key is the SDH enzyme, which increases in the muscles of people who exercise regularly.

“Fit people have huge quantities of SDH and other people don’t,” Giese said.

The no-exercise drug is called AICAR. Previous experiments suggested it might protect against gaining weight on a high-fat diet, which might be useful for treating obesity, Evans said. But it would have to be taken for a long time and its safety in people would have to be assured.

Evans, who told the AP he has no financial interest in either drug in the study, said he had doubted the experiment would work.

“Honestly, I just don’t know how that happens,” he said of the increased fitness level in the mice. “Whether it would happen in a person, I don’t know. I think it’s a small miracle that it happened at all.”

With the Olympics getting everyone’s attention, Evans noted the drugs could prove irresistible for athletes seeking an illegal edge. He said his team has developed detection tests for use by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

The AP story reported many drug companies are working on drugs such as AICAR on diabetes in animals. AICAR stimulates muscles to remove sugar from the blood, said Laurie Goodyear of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.

However, she said exercise has such widespread benefits in the body that she doubts any one pill will ever be able to supply all of them.

“For the majority of people, it would be better to exercise than take a pill,” she said.

Local advocates of good nutrition and exercise agree.

“My question would be, how can a pill have the same benefits to the body as taking a brisk walk, jog, or lifting weights?” said Michelle Goss, clinical dietitian for the Cherokee Nation’s Three Rivers Health Clinic.

She said the safety and long-term effects on the body would be her main concern with such a pill.

“As a dietitian, we get a lot of questions on what we think about taking diet pills and our response is that long-term studies have shown that for safe, effective weight loss and maintenance of that loss a person must make changes in their lifestyle to keep the weight off,” she said.

While it’s possible for someone to lose weight with diet pills, long-term maintenance of the weight loss is very low because most people do not change their lifestyle.

“It all comes back to balance and moderation of the foods you eat, combined with a regular exercise program, for the most successful weight loss and maintenance,” Goss said.

Tammy West, manager of Angela’s Fitness for Women, said she personally doesn’t believe in any magic pill that can produce weight loss and fitness. She said you have to exercise your heart, increasing your aerobic activity to become more fit.

“Your heart is muscle, and you have to work it,” she said. “If there was a magic pill, there would be nobody exercising. You have to eat right, and you have to exercise.”

Isabel Leatherwood, who works out regularly at Angela’s, agreed.

“Exercise is very important,” she said.

Leatherwood has maintained her slender shape by working out regularly since she was in seventh or eighth grade, and plans to keep it up throughout her lifetime.

West said people can begin exercising easily, without much expense. Just begin walking for 20 minutes a day. When you become more fit, you may want to join an organized program of some sort that appeals to you. Some people work out on equipment at a gym, while others take dance classes, yoga, swim or participate in team sports.

Giese recommends consulting with a fitness coach. He said a number of Web sites can offer advice on becoming fit.

“You’d probably want to go to someone who’s a trained professional, who can give you the proper advice,” he said.

Giese said sometime this fall, in late September or October, NSU will begin a new fitness program for women.

“We’re going to assess women’s level of fitness by their history and do a prescription for exercise,” he said.

The program will be open to NSU students at first and later he anticipates opening it to the public.

“Just like having good sound medical advice, you need to seek good sound physical exercise advice,” he said.