My interest in exercise and fitness led me to become a Physiatrist. I was so fortunate to have trained at Columbia when the PM&R Chairman was Robert C. Darling, MD former Director of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory. Many of the things we know about exercise physiology came from that lab.  He published the textbook “Physiological Basis of Rehabilitation Medicine” and I had the distinct honor of being the Chief Editor of its latest edition.  Even Dr.

Darling and his colleagues would be amazed at some of the recent findings relative to exercise and fitness.  For instance, researchers at the Salk Institute headed by Dr. Ronald Evans, reported that a drug, Aicar increased the endurance of unexercised mice

on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment. A second drug, GW1516, supercharged the mice to a 75 percent increase in endurance if combined with exercise. What? Fitness in a pill?  Hmmm. 

Speaking of pills, how about one that simulates the effect of a healthy low calorie diet, sufficiently activating the famine reflex, mediated  through  the  sirtuin  enzymes?   Dr. David Sinclair of

Harvard found the most potent activator is resveratrol, a natural substance found in red wine. The hope is that activating sirtuins in people would, like a calorically restricted diet in mice, yield a healthier, more fit senior citizens.  I take a capsule every day!  But don’t use me as the measure of its efficacy. Do I dare say, why starve when you can

pop a pill? Remember lactic acid?  As it turns out, George A. Brooks of UC Berkeley found that lactic acid is actually a fuel, not a caustic waste product causing muscle fatigue. Muscles produce it from glucose, and burn it to obtain energy and used as a fuel by mitochondria, the energy factories in muscle cells.   Intense training can double the mitochondrial mass, ergo more endurance. So what induces muscle fatigue? Not lactic acid. Dr. Andrew Marks of Columbia agrees. Instead, the problem is calcium flow inside muscle cells. Ordinarily, ebbs and flows of calcium in cells

control muscle contractions. But when muscles grow tired, tiny channels in them start leaking calcium, and that weakens contractions. At the same time, the leaked calcium stimulates an enzyme that eats into muscle fibers, contributing to the muscle exhaustion.

Who needs to hit the gym to lose fat and increase bone mass when all you have to do is stand on a platform that buzzes at such a low frequency that some people cannot even feel it.   Mice that stood on such a platform for 15 minutes a day, five days a week have 27 percent less fat than mice that did not stand on the platform — and correspondingly more bone, according to Dr. Clinton T. Rubin of SUNY Stony Brook. He and his colleagues discovered that high-magnitude signals, like the ones produced as the heel strikes the pavement, were not the critical signals affecting bone. Instead, bone responded to high frequency-low magnitude signals, a buzzing than a pounding. Muscles quiver when they contract, and that quivering is the predominant signal to bones. It occurs when people stand still and their muscles contract to keep them upright. Yes, mice….but NIH felt sufficiently impressed to test it on humans.

For something more mundane, according to a new report from the Institute of Medicine, you need not drink eight glasses of water a day to be well hydrated.  It doesn’t matter if it comes from juice, milk, coffee, tea, soda, fruits, vegetables and other foods and beverages, but not including alcohol.  Just drink when you feel the thirst. In fact, over hydration during vigorous exercise is dangerous especially if salt

Erwin G. Gonzalez

and minerals are not also replenished. Duh. It has been almost 12 years since I retired.  On that day, I declared “There is life after medicine”.  I tossed away every medical journal that came across my desk.  Funny thing, I still search PubMed and I can’t wait for Tuesdays…yes…it is New York Times Science Section day.  Hmmmmm.