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Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

What do the sluggardly and slothful wish for the most, aside from a Mountain Dew IV drip and Kari Byron to feed them Cheetos while they play Halo 3? That’s right, to be able to ingest a pill to give them all the benefits of exercise without, you know, having to move. That glorious day may just have come closer, as scientists have discovered a chemical that fools the body into thinking it’s just had a workout:

 

In experiments on mice that did no exercise, the chemical compound, known as AICAR, allowed them to run 44% farther on a treadmill than those that did not receive the drug.

 

The drug, according to the researchers, changed the physical composition of muscle, essentially transforming the tissue from sugar-burning fast-twitch fibers to fat-burning slow-twitch ones — the same change that occurs in distance runners and cyclists through training…

“It’s an amazing piece of pharmacology,” said David Mangelsdorf, a pharmacologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who was not connected with the research. “You’re getting the benefits of exercise without having to do any work.”

However, before you get yourself all winded in an attempt to celebrate, please note that this is still in the “test it on helpless rodents” phase of things; until and unless this line of research pans out, you will still have to occasionally hie your carcass off the davenport if you don’t want to keel over whilst grabbing for the packaged, orange-powdered corn bits you love so well. And no, Kari Byron isn’t coming over to bring them to you. Kari Byron can have anyone she wants. She’s not going to hang with people marinating in their own Ritz Bits, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Yes, life is unfair. Or at least will be until this exercise chemical hits your local pharmacy.

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John Scalzi

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Some people call me the space cowboy. Some people call me the gangster of love. Some people call me Maurice. And I'm all "What? Maurice? What?"
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