We all know that if you want to lose weight, you need to opt for the right diet and team it with the right amount of activity. In fact, experts even suggest that one should get at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week in order to stay fit. But what if we told you that there was a way of losing weight without opting for any sort of physical activity? A new study has found that there's a protein which may help cut down on those flaps without you having to move a muscle.
As of now, this protein isn't available in pill form but occurs naturally in the body. The researchers claim that this protein called Sestrin might be able to harness all the benefits of a good workout without your having to opt for physical activity. A research was conducted on flies and mice and it was found that the protein could mimic many of exercise's effects. Scientists are now hopeful that the findings from such researches could help combat problems like muscle wasting due to ageing and other issues.
"Researchers have previously observed that Sestrin accumulates in muscle following exercise," said Myungjin Kim, research assistant professor. The researchers wanted to figure out what it was that linked the protein to effects of exercise. The researchers then conducted research on Drosophila flies by building a treadmill for the flies. The team then divided the flies into two groups. One group was trained to run and fly while the other was bred to not have the Sestrin protein.
After a brief period, they compared the results between the two groups of flies. "Flies can usually run around four to six hours at this point and the normal flies' abilities improved over that period," said Lee. "The flies without Sestrin did not improve with exercise". They even found that flies who had maximum amounts of Sestrin did better than flies who had training.
"We propose that Sestrin can coordinate these biological activities by turning on or off different metabolic pathways," Lee said, adding that this kind of combined effect is important for producing exercise's effects. "This independent study again highlights that Sestrin alone is sufficient to produce many benefits of physical movement and exercise," Lee said. He also said that "we are working to find small molecule modulators of Sestrin".
