Ep 766 | VO2 Max - The Single Best Predictor of How Long You'll Live

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today we are going to spend a little bit of time talking health, and I want to talk to you today about something that, that actually really excites me. It's something that, well, I'm gonna be honest with you. It's one of those topics where the more I've actually learned, the more I've wanted to go back and kind of shake my younger self and say, "You should have done some things a little differently." Because no one really told me about this. No coach ever mentioned it to me, no trainer, no doctor. It just wasn't something discussed years back. And I think that's a problem. So today, I'm gonna tell you about it. And frankly, you're probably seeing it all over the place, especially if you are into health and training. You can't escape this, this number, this single number, this one metric. And it's a metric that researchers and longevity scientists now believe is the most powerful predictor of how long you're gonna live. It's known as your VO2 max. This is not about your blood pressure, it's not about your weight, it's not about your cholesterol or your resting heart rate. These are all things that, you know, over the past decade or two or three, I've always heard about those metrics and, you know, kind of in a fad sort of way, that's the area of focus. Well, your VO2 max is exactly why we're having this conversation today, because most don't deeply understand it. And again, it is the one metric that might be the most powerful predictor of how long you're gonna live. So let's start with the basics. Even if you think you understand VO2 max, let's go through it. We'll start with the basics. So VO2 max is a measure of your body's ability to consume and to use oxygen during exercise. So more specifically, it measures how efficiently your lungs and your heart and your muscles work together when you are pushing yourself pretty hard. So the higher your VO2 max, the more oxygen your body can process. And the more oxygen your body can process, the more capable your cardiovascular system happens to be. And the stronger that cardiovascular system, the more resilient that cardiovascular system. And so if you think of it like the engine in a car, two cars can look identical on the outside. They can be the same model, same year, same mileage and everything. But if you open up the hood, one engine is running cleaner and stronger than the other. The other one may be struggling. Well, VO2 max is essentially how strong is your engine. Now, here's where I think it gets really interesting, and even a little bit sobering. There was this landmark study that came out of the Cleveland Clinic. They had over 120,000 patients in this study, and it was tracked over a significant period of time. And what they found was pretty, pretty striking. People that had low cardiorespiratory fitness, which would be low VO2 max, had a higher risk of death than those with high blood pressure. They had a higher risk of death, death than smokers. They had a higher risk of death than diabetics. That's pretty crazy. I mean, like, let that one land for a second. Again, the those that had low VO2 were at greater risk than those with high blood pressure, smoked, were diabetics. So in other words, being unfit, at least by this measure, was a greater mortality risk than smoking. Now, if you're my age, and you kind of grew up where there was smoking in restaurants and on airplanes, and then that slowly went away as we became more educated, and you were around all the public health campaigns and the no smoking movement and all of that, and then just see how far it's progressed. It's fascinating because nobody's out there running public health campaigns about VO2 max right now. Nobody's putting it on a billboard. And yet, there's a greater mortality risk with low VO2 max than smoking. I bet your doctor, if you're seeing one regularly, may not have even mentioned it to you once. But the, the research around this continues to build. Dr. Peter Attia, who's one of our favorites here at the No Days Off Podcast, I reference him from time to time. He's one of the leading voices in longevity medicine, and he talks about VO2 max constantly. He describes VO2 max as one of the most important biomarkers that that you can track, not just for how long you live, but for the quality of life in your later years. You may recall here many, many episodes back, I talked around Dr. Attia's Centenarian Decathlon concept, the idea that if you wanna be phys— you know, that you wanna be physically capable in your latter years, in your 80s and your 90s, you've gotta be training for that now if you wanna be capable in those decades. Well, VO2 max is one of the primary levers that he discusses. Because what happens when we age, VO2 max naturally declines. It actually declines about 10% per decade after your 30s. And that means that if you're not actively working to maintain or improve it, you're losing ground every single year. And you're probably doing that somewhat quietly or even invisibly And then one day, the activities that used to feel pretty easy, well, they don't feel as easy anymore. That is your VO2 max, or at least VO2 max is playing a role in that. Now, I think it's important that we get real here, right? I am a fairly competitive endurance athlete. I've run marathons and 100-mile race, and I've got something coming up. So this topic certainly hits close to home for me in a more personal way. But I do think it's important to be clear, this is not just a conversation for athletes or those like me that think they're athletes. This isn't a conversation for people who run ultras or who train for some triathlon. This is a conversation that's for everyone. Because the research does not say only elite athletes benefit from high VO2 max. They say, or it says, that the biggest gains in longevity come from moving from the bottom of the fitness spectrum to just the middle of the spectrum. So you don't have to be elite, you don't have to be some endurance athlete, you just have to not be sedentary. And I think that jump alone from low fitness to moderate fitness is where the most dramatic reductions in mortality risk happen to live. So how do you know, you know, what your VO2 max happens to be? Well, let's talk about that. The gold standard, of course, no shot, no surprise here, the gold standard for measurement is done in the lab. It's done on a treadmill or on a bike. You're wearing this crazy mask and then you increase the intensity gradually and the equipment measures the exact volume of oxygen you're consuming at your maximum effort. I have not done this yet, but I am definitely gonna do it here soon because I'm fascinated by this. It's, you know, this sort of testing is obviously going to be incredibly accurate and precise. It's also not something most people are going to do. However, the good news is you don't have to go to the— go to a lab. There are many fitness wearables. As a matter of fact, if you're watching this on YouTube, I have a Garmin on my left wrist, I have a Whoop on my right wrist. Garmin and Whoop are two tools. The Apple Watch measures VO2 max. There's a whole bunch of tools out there. The Oura Ring, I think, measures VO2 max, but they all estimate VO2 using your heart rate data during exercise. It's not perfect, but we're not necessarily trying to look at the score. What we're trying to do is look at the direction. So it gives you a number to track over time, which is really, you know, the most important point. And then you're aiming to improve that number. So you're not trying to win a science fair here. I think you're just trying to know, Hey, am I trending in the right direction? So what's a good number? Well, VO2 max is measured in milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. Yes, you heard that right. VO2 max is measured in milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. Now for context, elite endurance athletes, like we're talking about the most professional of the professionals, the professional cyclists, the marathon runners, they're in the 70s or 80s, even some of them are higher. For the average person, the rough kind of numbers here, men in their 40s, if you're below 40 on your VO2 max, you're considered low. 40 to 50 is considered good. Above 50 is considered excellent. For women in their 40s, below 30 is low. 30 to 40 is good. Above 40 is excellent. Now, these numbers shift a bit with age, but the categories stay roughly the same— that low, moderate, good, and excellent. And again, the goal for most people isn't excellent. The goal is to get out of low, because the move alone, that move alone, changes your trajectory dramatically. So let's get to maybe the most important point of all this. How do you improve your VO2 max? This is where I want to speak directly to the person who might be newer to this. Maybe someone who isn't exercising consistently, who hears this VO2 max concept and thinks, well, that sounds like something for people who are already fit. Well, it's not. Here's the beautiful thing about starting from a lower baseline. You actually get to improve faster. See, the fittest people in the world have to work incredibly hard to move their VO2 max even a little. But someone who's, who's not in that sort of condition, they can see meaningful improvement in weeks. I think the most effective thing you could do is simply move consistently at a moderate intensity. And we're talking about exercise in the zone 2 cardio level. And we talked about zone 2 just, gosh, I guess it was a few weeks ago, I think I brought it up. It sounds technical. It's really not. All that means is you're breathing harder than normal, but you could still hold a conversation. So, this could be a brisk walk. It could be a light jog. Maybe it's a bike ride. Maybe it's a swim. But you could still talk. It's just a little bit harder. And you're doing that for 30 or 45 minutes at a time. Do it 4 or 5 times a week. If you do that, you know, that's the foundation. And once that becomes your baseline, and then you layer in some high— higher intensity work, which would basically be short bursts of hard— harder effort, and then recover, and you start to bake these other things in, that combination, that steady moderate work plus the occasional hard efforts, is the most proven formula for improving your VO2 max. So you don't need a crazy fancy program. You don't need a gym membership. What you need is just a little bit of consistency and a little bit of discomfort. So, here's what I want to leave you with today. We spend so much time on this podcast talking about business and relationships and wealth and all of that stuff. And you've heard me say this before, but none of that stuff matters if the engine, if your engine gives out early. Your VO2 max is a measure of your engine. And unlike a lot of things in health, it is highly trainable at any age and at any starting point. So go find where you're at right now, get a wearable, check the wearable, maybe book a lab test if you want precision, and then get your number and then start moving toward a better one. And even gamify it, which is something that I attempt to do. And you just do it one workout at a time. That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.