Salk Institute researchers seem to have made a breakthrough of sorts of narrowing down on two drugs which could actually lull the muscles into feeling the experience of a work out, without actually working out.

During their experiments on couch potato mice using the drug named Aicar, researchers found that the endurance of the mice on the treadmill shot up by 44% after subjecting the mice with this drug for one month.

The second drug, GW1516, was found to be doubly effective, increasing their endurance by 75%, though the catch with this drug needed a combination of exercise and treatment to reach high level of effectiveness.

Calling it a ‘free lunch without calories’, Dr. Ronald M. Evans, leader of the Salk group, expressed immense hope about the drugs, which may be useful in a variety of settings. For instance, it could be a blessing for people who are too weak to exercise or who suffer from lifestyle /genetic diseases that improve with exercise.

Dr. Johan Auwerx, a specialist in metabolic diseases at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, expressed happiness over the results of Aicar, he said, “The fact you can mimic exercise is a big advantage, because diet and exercise are the pillars of diabetes treatment.”