Study: Viagra Helps Mice Burn Fat Faster
Viagra Will a drug already popular among athletes suddenly become a hit with the couch potato crowd? We hope not. We've heard about athletes using Viagra to gain a (modest/debatable) competitive edge. Now, researchers are reporting another potential perk of the little blue pill, one that might appeal to people on the other end of the physical spectrum: the drug may help burn away excess fat. The key to the drug's fat-burning potential lies in its apparent ability to help convert one kind of fat--"white adipose tissue," the kind most people have in abundance--to another kind, called "brown adipose tissue." The difference is described nicely in a blog post by biologist Jalees Rehman: Brown fat cells are packed with many small fat droplets and mitochondria, which is why they appear "brown" under the microscope. Their mitochondria contain high levels of the protein UCP-1 (uncoupling protein 1), which "uncouples" fat...