WWC 104
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Speaker 5: [00:00:00] But the real magic in all of this is just doing the things that we talked about consistently and understanding why you're doing it. Right. It's not just, it's not always just an aesthetic piece. It's a longevity piece. It's how well can my body do this? Because that translates into how well can I get over an illness?
If I'm in a car accident, I need a big surgery, how well can I recover? All of those things matter. If I get diagnosed with something and I have to go through chemo, how well will my body bounce back? I mean, all of those things. We want to have resilience in our body. We wanna be able to travel and, at an older age, be able to lift up our bags and step onto the bus and do a fun hike in Croatia, whatever it is, whatever your goals are, but you don't want it to stop just because you've reached an age number and to do that.
We've gotta have some knowledge base around what it is we're working towards and the why.
Speaker: Welcome to the Wild and Well Collective Podcast where we believe empowered health is your superpower.
Speaker 2: We have combined our expertise in medicine and nutrition to bring you the latest research expert insights and success stories of people on a mission to live a big life.
Speaker: So [00:01:00] buckle up and get ready to learn how to live wildly well.
CHRISTA ELZA: Welcome to another episode of The Wild and Well Collective. Today we're going to be talking about something that maybe you have no idea what it is, and I wanna bring this to light because. Super duper important in terms of anti-aging and longevity, and the topic is VO two max, and you might be like, what in the heck is that and why should I care about VO two max?
It ultimately is the maximum volume of oxygen that your body uses during intense exercises. So think of it kind of like. A machine, like maybe a car engine. How well does it take in oxygen and function? So think about it like you have a car at sea level, how does it function? And then, the next day you take it up to the mountains and you're wanting it to drive up a mountain hill at a [00:02:00] higher altitude.
The car doesn't perform as well because it's not as efficient. That particular engine is not as efficient, and so basically the performance declines. That's what can happen to our bodies. It does decline with age. It's actually a vital key sign of your overall health, much like blood pressure or cholesterol.
You have a VO two max, whatever it is, you're just unaware of it right now, but it's, I want this discussion to bring to light like what it is, how you can test it, how you can improve it, and really shine light on the importance of this marker really can be more precise about your cellular age.
Then tests that we have that can, let's say claim that they look at the length of your telomeres. I have that test that I can offer to my patients that gives us something maybe on the cellular level, but ultimately, even if your telomeres [00:03:00] are long on this test, if you can't perform well, you're probably not going to live another whatever x number of years.
Right? It really is a key indicator. On your ability to perform and to do physical activity. And ultimately the higher your VO two max, the higher amount of oxygen that you can actually use and have a, like, make an impact on your body the better endurance you have, the fast recovery and resilience to stressors happens, right?
So this is where our conversation is. It's telling us how well your heart. How well your lungs, your blood, your muscles all work together just like that car at higher altitude can perform. Right? And we know this in terms of athletes, that's part of the reason why they train at higher altitudes, because now their VO two max has improved.
And then when they go to lower levels, lower altitude, they [00:04:00] perform even better because their body is optimized because it's been stressed in a certain way. So that's where we're at with that. Sheri, you focus a lot on fitness with your clients. Tell us a little bit about VO two max and longevity, like the link in fitness to this.
SHEREE BEAUMONT: Yeah, I love this. I think you explained it so well. Like I look at it as your oxygen capacity, so the ability for your body to hold a level of oxygen. What is the maximum oxygen capacity you can have? And if you think about that, you may have heard of the blood doping and that sort of thing that goes on during the Tour de France.
I remember studying it when I was in school and essentially they pretty much just oxygenate their red blood cells a lot more. They actually inject themselves with more red blood cells so that they can have a higher oxygen capacity. So it's like what you were talking about with the altitude training, where you're treating the system but the altitude training is legit and you're not technically doping your blood.
But when we think about it from this level of fitness. When we think about it from a capacity to [00:05:00] train, I know myself, I was like always used to train for the physical. Appearance look, or being really strong. And I was like, we don't need cardio. Why would we need cardio? I don't have to worry about my heart at this age.
And I think the really cool thing about when we understand the link between VO two max and longevity and the. Fitness component to this is it's not just about your heart health. It's not just about your capacity to breathe more, right? When we think, oh, more oxygen, cool, I can, what does that mean? I can breathe deeper.
I can breathe longer. I can hold my breath for a little bit longer. No, it really does show, and the literature supports how much this is one of the strongest predictors in all cause mortality. Now what do we mean by that? Literally like the higher this is. Especially above average. If you're sitting in that above average range, you are going to reduce your risk of dip.
By around 70%. So if you sit in that above average range and across the board in [00:06:00] all cause mortality, so all causes of death, you're gonna drop it down. So we are talking, yeah, heart attack, stroke, that sort of thing as well. But if we've got a higher level of VO two max, you're also going to, by association or by connection, have better insulin levels.
You're going to have a better regulated. System in terms of how you can perform as well. So the studies show not only are we're above average, which you know, for some of you might going, I don't need to be above average or how do I get there? I'm just starting out on my fitness journey. That's totally fine.
We've even seen. Moving from low fitness levels, so that 25% to just below average, so we're not even talking average level here, you actually cut your mortality risk by 50% as well. So when we are thinking about this from a, a training level, you don't have to be. Training at altitude, you don't have to be operating at Olympic athlete level.
You don't even have to be operating in the sense that you're going for a run every single day. We're not talking about that. We're actually talking about the fact that you just need to take yourself from where you are or what's considered the [00:07:00] standard of below average to just below average, and you're still gonna see a massive decrease in your mortality risk, which to me is amazing.
So it's these small improvements that matter. In fact, each milliliter per kg per minute increase has been linked to even a 9% lower risk of death. So like you can see incrementally. That makes such a difference. So it's not just from a cardiovascular perspective, it's across the board and you don't need to be a marathon runner, we just don't want you to be sedentary.
So hopefully that kind of makes a little bit of sense from a fitness level. Krista, I'm curious. We talk about death, which is not always a fun thing to be discussing, but ideally we're coming at this from a longevity perspective. How can we optimize our health so we are living longer and also living well?
While we're living longer? What happens as we age though when it comes to VO two max x?
CHRISTA ELZA: Yeah, and this is why it's so important [00:08:00] to implement kinda what you just talked about, like being active. Because the fact is our VO two max declines two to 10% every decade after you reach age 30. So that's pretty significant if you plan on living to a hundred.
That's our goal or beyond. That's significant if you don't take action. The mechanisms of that decline include reduced cardiac output, which means every time the heart pumps, it pumps out less per B. Right? So less oxygenation is happening. That's part of the factor of what's integrated into the formula of what a VO O2 max number equals to be.
There's lower mitochondrial efficiency in muscles as well as we age, which means. Every cell within the muscle is producing less and less energy. So the muscle itself has less oxygen, it has less oxygen carrying capacity, it has less mitochondria stim, promoting and helping us do things like box jumps and sprints and quick movements, right, that we can do typically when [00:09:00] we're younger.
And we typically have less muscle mass overall. All of those things combine. If you have that that cardiac output that's declining, we have. Decreased mitochondrial function, we have decreased muscle overall. All of that kind of comes together to create that slow but steady decline if we don't counteract it.
The good news is we can slow it. We can even reverse this decline with things that you talked about with targeted training, and that's where we can be empowered in this. Most people see dramatic improvements in midlife or older age with the correct. Approaches. Right? And oftentimes that can be working with a trainer that can help push your own limits.
I think it's difficult. I'm just saying this from my own perspective. I don't know about you, but I push myself to the highest that I think I can do. But always when I'm working with a trainer, they're gonna push you beyond your own limits. They're there to spot you for heavier weights, they're there to push you for more sprints.
They're, and all of those things are important to [00:10:00] improve EO two max. So I would highly recommend if. If this is something that you're like, okay, I don't want to just say, okay, getting winded upstairs, that's just aging right? As I get old, I'm not gonna be able to do certain things. You don't have to take that as an answer.
In fact, you shouldn't. If living longer more robust life is your priority, you probably need to either go to classes or watch videos or have a trainer or have a workout partner, somebody who's going to help you create targeted change because. The bad news is it declines with age. The good news is we can do something about it.
So we've talked a little bit about things you can do, but how do people, like if you can share with us a little bit about how VO two itself is actually measured, because I think that can be confusing too. Like cool, we're talking about this. How the hell do we know what our VO two max is and if we're improving it?
Right.
SHEREE BEAUMONT: A hundred percent. And like I remember, like I said, almost ignoring this for the longest period of time, and part of it was because I knew. How it was tested, right? I studied exercise science and I was like, well, I'm never gonna understand this because I'm never gonna go and [00:11:00] pay for the gold standard of testing.
And just to your point about having a trainer or having something that kind of pushes you outside of your comfort zone, particularly in relation to this, like I will put my hand down and be the first to say like, I really struggle to push myself cardiovascularly. I will a hundred percent go for a nice walk outside, and I will definitely be the person in the gym pushing my weights up, which.
Helps in a way with cardio, but the, one of the things that I love to share with everyone is like. I book myself in for a class every week that is gonna, unless I'm menstruating, in terms of cycle sinking, but doing something that is really, really challenging. Like last week I went into NIF 45 class.
The week before that it was a berries. This week is a soul cycle, and it's putting your body into that kind of like high intensity state. Yes, you're doing the movement and you wanna do the movement with control, but holy crap, am I panting? I'm red in the face, I'm puffed out. I am really reaching my max capacity.
And again, VO two max, like what is your maximum? And [00:12:00] can we keep pushing that? And ironically, which I'll link it back to your question. I ironically, when I look at my aura ring, it shows me my cardiovascular age is six years younger than what I am. So, it's amazing the type of training that you can do.
And like I even had a client the other day, we were talking about this, we were talking about his biological age and then his cardiovascular age and the biological age were like this new client. Bloods came back massively high bi biological age. But with the training that we've been doing, he's actually seen a drop by one year so far, which is huge in three months.
Has dropped down significantly as a result of doing more exercise and more fitness things so that he can bring that VO two max. Up and therefore his his cardiovascular age down, which is essentially what kind of what we're talking about here to improve your longevity. So I've touched on a couple of things in terms of how it's measured.
The first one is the gold standard. And this is what we saw when I was at university, right? You have the mask on your face, you have the lab [00:13:00] graded, like the lab based tests that are high exercise grade. You've got this metabolic cup measuring your gas exchange when you run or when you're on a bike and you're going to exhaustion.
I remember looking at that being like in class, being like, nah, I'm not volunteering for that. Thank you very much. It'll be embarrassing, but it is the most precise and it's what high, high, high level athletes do to check where the VO two max is because it is that significant when you're training at that level.
So. That is one way. If you really are into this, I'm like, yep, maybe I wanna go do that. You'll be able to find somewhere that does it. There are portable devices, which I'm not overly familiar with. I learned about this when we were doing the research for the podcast, but it's called a VO two master. It's quite close to the lab accuracy, but it's a little bit more practical in the field testing, but one that's most common that most of us will be familiar with at some point or potentially have on us and have available to us are our wearables, our wearable devices. Now, that's your gum and your Apple Watch, or Polo Your Whoop, or like I mentioned before, your Aura Ring.[00:14:00]
All of them are gonna tell you a version of your VOT max. And I say version because it is. Quite far. We don't have the exact numbers in terms of how accurate it is in comparison to the gold standard that we talked about earlier with the mask on the face and going to exhaustion. But just like anything, I always say, your wearable, as long as you're not changing from one wearable to the other all the time, it's kinda like your baseline, it's your control.
And so. If you started off and your VO two max was sitting at a certain level, it was considered below average. And then you train and you notice that on your aura, it's improving you and your cardiovascular age is dropping, your VO two is going up. You can trust that there's progress. It may not be that exact number, but you're progressing in the right direction, and that's really ultimately what matters.
So we can use things like your aura ring in that to give you a gauge. And I remember looking at it being like, what does this even matter? But now I'm a little bit more interested as we get older because I'm like, okay, I need to bring this into gear the final way you can do it. Which I think, I don't know if you called them this in the us, [00:15:00] but we had beep tests and they were god awful.
But deep tests never done for Cooper Test apparently is the other name for it. But essentially you. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this is like there's a little tape or that's what we had when I was at school. It's probably on an app now, but essentially there's, you set out these cones and I think it's like 20 meters distance.
I don't know what that is in feet. And it beeps and you run, you normally start at like a level three and you run back and forth. You run and then you beep, and then you run, and then you beep like you've gotta make to the next cone before the beep happens. And it's progressively gets faster. So you might start at a level three.
I remember being so stoked with myself for getting to a level 14 once, which was actually quite impressive. But that was when I was at my fittest. And then we'd have people in class, like in PE class. It was a fun thing apparently that we did inside PE class to test your fitness. And some people would finish the tape, they'd get to like level 20, and it was like, holy crap.
Like these were the top athletes in the school, [00:16:00] right? And so. Little did I know that was actually a way of testing your VO two max. But these beep tests can be something. Honestly, I'm gonna go and have a look after this. I should have looked before the episode started recording if there's an app to do it.
But you can test your fitness in those type of ways. And believe it or not, I do know people that think that's fun to do still. So I
CHRISTA ELZA: ideally we're thinking about, I don't know, I don't think testing VO two Maxis fund ever, you're maxing yourself out, like not. Fun per se.
SHEREE BEAUMONT: Yeah. No, I was never, never a fan of the beep test at school.
Always did them, but we could always, I remember all of my friends and I being like, this is the one PE class that we would love to have a note to get outta because who just wants to run back and forth and like keep exhausting themselves.
CHRISTA ELZA: right. Yeah. I really think that like getting tested for VOT Max is not a comfortable thing, much like, a stress test for cardio, with an echo.
People hate those too because you gotta really stress the heart and the testing is the worst part, but the actual training for it, I think isn't as. Bad is what [00:17:00] we're describing. Like when you're actually like measuring your vo O2 max really, if you're pretty consistent with workouts, what I like to do is that 80 20 approach.
So 80% of your workouts you should have a really good base of, we've talked about weightlifting a ton. This is not negating that, like we wanna have good weightlifting because that's part of the puzzle as well. But in terms of like. Cardiovascular endurance. You wanna do 80% of your cardiovascular exercises being in zone two, which zone two is about 60 to 70% of your max heart rate.
If you remember back in school, max heart rate is typically two 20 minus your age. You could say that's about your max heart rate. And then from there you could take 60 to 70% of that, and that's about the range that you want to be in, or if you don't wanna be at that precise. Can I go and can I have a conversation with this?
So for a lot of people, that's gonna be maybe a weighted vest walk. Right. So your heart rate is challenging. You're not just sitting there for sure, but you can have a [00:18:00] conversation that's that zone too. The 20% then of your workouts, which is gonna be significantly shorter is gonna be more like your hit workouts.
So, burpees, bucks, jumps sprints on the treadmill or on the street. So short, intense intervals, and that's gonna be pushing your cardiovascular system to its limit. But that's, so it's forcing adaptations. You're forcing your body to be like, whoa, we're at a different altitude. If we're gonna still use that same anal analogy, we're going up a hill at a higher at a higher altitude.
We need to get more robust. We need to create more. More capacity, right? So it's important for our body to be stressed on some levels. But you do wanna keep that about 20% of your cardiovascular workouts. So it's not just about going hard all the time, for sure. It's about building a huge aerobic engine with that zone two 80% of the time, and then you wanna top it off, hit intervals.
So for me, I typically do. Hit workouts maybe twice a week. And [00:19:00] then, some days are just like maybe a short cardio maybe a one to two mile walk and then waits. And then other days I'm doing like a longer 30, 45 minute plus. Sometimes two and a half hours with a hike, let's say on the weekends.
That's my cardiovascular exercise. For me personally, there's something called a four by four protocol. It's. Also called the Norwegian model. We'll put that in the show notes. Really just talks about doing a warmup, four minutes hard four minutes, easy recovery, repeating this four or six times.
So you're doing a cycle where you're combining the hard and the more relaxed zones together in one single workout. So we'll put that in there too, because I think these are tangible ways that you could start to improve your VO two max and maintain it right as you h.
SHEREE BEAUMONT: Oh, a hundred percent.
Speaker 4: So one of the other ways I love to share with my clients is around the fact that you can actually do this through strength training too. So a lot of the time we'll go in, we'll go to the gym and we'll just do our 45 minutes to an hour long workout. But during that time, like we mentioned before, [00:20:00] you're in about 60 to 70% of your maximal heart rate, like that's ideally where you're sitting.
And to talk to the point of your 80 20 split, you could do say 45 minutes of that and tack on about 15 minutes. Of more of that hit. So if you're someone that's like, I don't necessarily wanna do a whole HIIT workout this week, or each week or twice a week, or even the idea of doing a HIIT workout, just like, no thank you, or even just the idea of doing intense cardio does not sound like your cup of tea.
Often what I'll do is like even personally, we'll do our intense. Work out in the sense of the heavy weight lifting, and then we'll tack on 15 minutes of, you know, I might do the ski er with some medicine ball slams and I'll go back and forth, do a couple, like do four or five rounds of that till I'm kind of hot and sweaty.
I've pushed myself, but it doesn't feel like I'm necessarily doing heaps and heaps of cardio. Instead, I'm getting that more of a resistance burn, but I've still got my heart rate up and I'm getting into that max capacity. I offer that as something, just a different style of training. If you're kind of sitting here going, I don't wanna [00:21:00] dedicate time to this VO two max stuff, or I don't wanna dedicate time to cardio if you're anything like me.
That sounds awful. And that's why I have to go to a class to get it done outside of this kind of training. But that's just something I'll say I wanted to offer from a PT perspective. If you do wanna try it on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I think kind of wrapping this conversation up and to kinda reiterate some things, VO two max is more than just a number. Like the number is the number, but really what it is, it's integrative numbers, value really. It tells us what's your heart capacity, what's your lung function, what's your blood's, oxygen carrying capacity?
What's the mitochondrial density in your muscle? I mean, all of those things are really important when we're talking about having a long, healthy life, right? So the number doesn't matter, but it's more than just a number. It's all of those things. When we're training for VO two max, just, you know, like you said, and like you mentioned, it doesn't have to be crazy like, [00:22:00] I'm gonna test this once a month, and you know, but you wanna have it in mind that you want to improve your cardiovascular health.
You wanna improve your body's insulin sensitivity, like how well your body can take in food and convert it to energy, right? You want to improve your body's ability to. For fat oxidation, taking in, again, fat from diet and really use that for fuel. You wanna be able to recover from stress well. So all of those are kinda the motivating factor to, to keep kind of this training of some zone two, some zone five, you know, HIIT workouts, all of that together.
Because it's arguably the single. Best metric for holistic health and resilience. It really, really is. So whether or not you're paying attention to it, you do have a number and we just wanna optimize that. And it really isn't just about being able to run faster. It's really. A number that reflects the health of your heart, your lungs, and your muscles all working better together.
So really the ways that you can do this, again, it doesn't require fancy tech. You just want to [00:23:00] go on brisk walks. You really want to build a good, strong zone two base, meaning you can go and you can hike for two and a half hours and not feel like you're gonna collapse At the end of that, like you, you wanna build yourself up to where you can really do this talking workout for sometimes hours at a time.
And you also want to be able to sprinkle in some hit. You wanna be able to do. Box jumps, burpees, whatever your joints and all that can handle. But you wanna be able to do something that is really pushing your max, for a short period of time. And then if you wanna go deeper, you do some of the things like Sheri, you mentioned, wearing a device, buying a portable analyzer or seeking out a clinic that carries some of those things for precise numbers and tracking if you really wanna go deeper with it.
But the real magic in all of this is just doing the things that we talked about consistently and understanding why you're doing it. Right. It's not just, it's not always just an aesthetic piece. It's a longevity piece. It's how well can my body do this? Because that translates into how well can I get over an [00:24:00] illness?
If I'm in a car accident, I need a big surgery, how well can I recover? All of those things matter. If I get diagnosed with something and I have to go through chemo, how well will my body bounce back? I mean, all of those things. We want to have resilience in our body. We wanna be able to travel and, at an older age, be able to lift up our bags and step onto the bus and do a fun hike in Croatia, whatever it is, whatever your goals are, but you don't want it to stop just because you've reached an age number and to do that.
We've gotta have some knowledge base around what it is we're working towards and the why. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this. Again, it's not about chasing a perfect plan, it's really just about chasing, you know, your desires and sticking to things consistently. And I hope you found this conversation helpful.
If you have any questions, post 'em below. Be sure to follow us. Share this podcast with someone who you know, could use it, and we can't wait to see you next time.
Speaker 3: If you love this episode, be sure to leave us a review, download, and subscribe. If you know someone that could also [00:25:00] benefit from this conversation, please share. That's how we Spread Empowered Health. We'll see you again for another episode of the Wild and Wild Collective.
