THE Critical Indicator of Health & Longevity ...
- Nick Williams
- Oct 17
- 5 min read
What is your VO2 Max ?
The answer could transform your health.
This key metric reflects how much oxygen your body uses during a workout.
But it isn't just for athletes ...... your VO2 Max is a critical indicator for your future health and longevity.
A curated series of articles from trusted sources follows;
Why boosting your VO2 max could help you live longer.
National Geographic
8 August, 2024 by Ellen O'Brien
What’s your VO2 max?
The answer could transform your health.
This key metric reflects how much oxygen your body uses during a workout.
But it isn’t just for athletes—your VO2 max is a critical indicator for your future health and longevity.
Why VO2 max is a crucial metric for longevity
VO2 max isn’t just about athletic performance; it’s also vital for health and longevity.
“It’s the gold standard for determining your cardiorespiratory fitness, which is just a fancy way of saying how in shape you are,” says Nicole Harkin, a preventive cardiologist and founder of Whole Heart Cardiology. While primarily studied in athletes and those with cardiovascular diseases, VO2 max is also a key metric for the general population to understand their mortality risk.
Gifford adds that it is the best predictor of future health outcomes, including early mortality, cardiovascular disease, and even Alzheimer’s disease. “Having a low VO2 max has about the same cardiovascular risk as smoking,” he says.
Research supports this: a 2018 review in 'Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark' named VO2 max the strongest predictor of life expectancy. In 2016, the American Heart Association recommended incorporating VO2 max into clinical evaluations for its predictive value.
Even slight increases in VO2 max can significantly impact longevity and health. “For every milliliter per kilo per minute increase from your personal baseline, you decrease, on average, your risk of all-cause mortality, which means dying from anything - heart disease, stroke, cancer, dementia, infections by 10 percent,” Harkin says.
How to increase your VO2 Max.
To increase your VO2 max, you’ll also want to make sure that you’re layering in some HIIT or vigorous exercise with that more moderate-intensity cardio. Harkin suggests aiming for 150 to 300 minutes of aerobic exercise weekly. Addressing cardiovascular risk factors, like high blood pressure or cholesterol, also helps.
But Gifford warns to be cautious of fitness watches, which often overestimate VO2 max. For a more accurate reading, consider exercise testing with an exercise physiologist or cardiologist (with your physician’s approval).
Understanding your VO2 max will allow you to gauge your current level of cardiovascular health and fitness and build upon it. While it’s a great metric to target, don’t be discouraged by exercises or activities that fail to push the needle.
In a study Gifford conducted, a subject trained for eight weeks—and his VO2 max didn’t increase at all. But his lactate threshold and critical power did, as did the length of time he could ride a bike at 10 miles per hour. “So if you just had the idea that VO2 max is the only thing, you’d really miss a lot of it,” Gifford says.
What is VO2 Max and how can you improve it.
Harvard Health
Once you know your VO2 max, you have a baseline from which to improve.
Age, gender, elevation, and activity levels all affect your VO2 max score. Of these four factors, the easiest to control is your activity level. While your VO2 max tends to decrease as you age, it's possible to greatly slow its decline by remaining active.
Benefits of improving your VO2 Max
While your starting VO2 max number can reflect your current fitness level, it's more important to focus on improving your readings over time. Increasing your VO2 max is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and stroke. Plus, better fitness is associated with improved sleep and quality of life.
How to improve your VO2 Max
'Get your heart pumping'
You can improve your VO2 max by doing any aerobic exercise that gets your heart pumping - the more vigorous, the better.
If you're not currently active, walking may be vigorous enough to trigger improvements in your VO2 max score.
Incorporate intervals.
If you're already quite active, try incorporating sessions of high-intensity interval training. HIIT is a fast and effective way to increase VO2 max, even if you're already very active. Try doing an interval training workout several times per week, interspersed with slower, longer-duration activities.
Switch up your workout routine.
Your body is constantly adapting. If you're primarily a swimmer, try cycling. If you usually train at a slow, steady pace, ramp things up. If you usually work out for 30 minutes, try adding 10 minutes to your routine. All of these changes force your body to work harder to adapt.
Lose Weight.
Because relative VO2 max is measured relative to your weight, simply losing weight can boost your VO2 max.
According to Global Thought Leaser, Peter Attia MD
The single biggest predictor of life span in any number that we have is Vo2 Max according to global thought leader in this space, Peter Attia MD.
Vo2 is a ‘remarkable’ integrator of the work that you have put into your fitness / health over the long term. Directly under Vo2 Max is measures of ‘strength’. No one can ‘cram’ for Vo2 Max or Strength tests and the data is unequivical with 122,000 patient studied over the long-term.
Key takeaways;
Going from ‘Low’ to ‘Below Average’ (if starting in your 50’s) will result in a 50% reduction in mortality over a decade.
Going from ’Low’ to ‘Above Average’ will result in a 60-70% reduction in mortality.
The lowest improvement is from ‘High’ to ‘Elite’ - but it is still statistically significant, and still has the lowest risk factor.
Comparing someone who is ‘Low’ fitness to ‘Elite’ - there is a 5X difference in mortality over a decade.
If you put this in the context of other things that we commonly understand as being problematic for mortality .....namely, smoking, coronary artery disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and end-stage renal disease, that’s a 41% increase in mortality over the decade compared to the risk of;
Coronary artery disease, 29%.
Diabetes, 40%.
High blood pressure, 21%.
End-stage renal disease, about 180% increase in mortality
So, now when you compare that to the differences in these fitness levels, it gives you a greater appreciation for how much improvement in mortality comes from just improving your fitness.
If you look at the biggest driver of mortality, which would be end-stage renal disease in this cohort, it’s the same as going from low cardiorespiratory fitness to above average cardiorespiratory fitness
Comments