Don't feel like exercising? Can't exercise? Don't have energy for it?

But your doctor told you to exercise regularly to reduce your blood glucose levels?

Don't worry.

Researcher discovers a muscle that can promote glucose and fat burning to fuel metabolism for hours while sitting!

This is  a groundbreaking discovery set to turn a sedentary lifestyle on its ear: The soleus muscle in the calf, though only 1% of your body weight, can do big things to improve the metabolic health in the rest of your body 'if activated correctly'.

"Soleus pushup" (SPU)  effectively elevates muscle metabolism for hours, even while one is sitting. The soleus, one of 600 muscles in the human body, is a posterior leg muscle that runs from just below the knee to the heel.

Published in the journal iScience, this research  suggests the soleus pushup's ability to sustain an elevated oxidative metabolism to improve the regulation of blood glucose is more effective than any popular methods currently touted as a solution including exercise, weight loss and intermittent fasting. Oxidative metabolism is the process by which oxygen is used to burn metabolites like blood glucose or fats, but it depends, in part, on the immediate energy needs of the muscle when it's working.

When activated correctly, the soleus muscle can raise local oxidative metabolism to high levels for hours, not just minutes, and does so by using a different fuel mixture.

Muscle biopsies revealed there was minimal glycogen contribution to fueling the soleus. Instead of breaking down glycogen, the soleus can use other types of fuels such as blood glucose and fats. Glycogen is normally the predominant type of carbohydrate that fuels muscular exercise.

The soleus's lower-than-normal reliance on glycogen helps it work for hours effortlessly without fatiguing during this type of muscle activity, because there is a definite limit to muscular endurance caused by glycogen depletion. This could be the first concerted effort to develop a specialized type of contractile activity centered around optimizing human metabolic processes.

When the SPU was tested, the whole-body effects on blood chemistry included a 52% improvement in the excursion of blood glucose (sugar) and 60% less insulin requirement over three hours after ingesting a glucose drink.

The new approach of keeping the soleus muscle metabolism humming is also effective at doubling the normal rate of fat metabolism in the fasting period between meals, reducing the levels of fat in the blood (VLDL triglyceride).

Now how do you perform a soleus pushup?

In brief, while seated with feet flat on the floor and muscles relaxed, the heel rises while the front of the foot stays put. When the heel gets to the top of its range of motion, the foot is passively released to come back down. The aim is to simultaneously shorten the calf muscle while the soleus is naturally activated by its motor neurons.

While the SPU movement might look like walking (though it is performed while seated) it is the exact opposite, according to the researchers. When walking, the body is designed to minimize the amount of energy used, because of how the soleus moves. Hamilton's method flips that upside down and makes the soleus use as much energy as possible for a long duration.

Marc T. Hamilton et al, A potent physiological method to magnify and sustain soleus oxidative metabolism improves glucose and lipid regulation, iScience (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104869