Hello everyone! In today’s article, we’ll be talking about one of the best measurements for longevity. I’m constantly trying to find out what can I personally do to live longer, and these are the results!

01_ The Best Test For Longevity!

One of the best tests that you can get done is called VO2 max okay so that’s what I’m going to talk about today I’m also going to talk about how to increase this VO2 max.

02_ What Is VO2 Max?

Well! It’s the volume of oxygen or capacity of oxygen your body can consume for a certain amount of time and it’s measured in milliliters per kilogram per minute and it is one of the best tests for aerobic capacity or aerobic fitness and the capacity of consuming oxygen and it’s a test that you can get from certain doctors that specialize in sports medicine.

So, if we look at the values of this VO2 max we have um three categories like sedentary active and very active so if we look at these three categories for men an average VO2 max for someone who’s sedentary would be roughly about 35 to 40. and then when you go up to active it goes like roughly on average 42.5 to 46.4 and then if you’re really active right you’re super athlete it can go up to like 75 or 85 and then for a woman it’s a little bit lower sedentary would be between 27 and active would be between 33 and 36.9 and then very active you know roughly on average.

But, what’s interesting if we look at some of the best scores for VO2 max out there by top athletes the top three scores apparently which is interesting they’re all from Norway one is a cyclist and he’s the top of course he’s 18 years old but his VO2 max was like 97.5 that is crazy high and then the other two were cross-country skiers from Norway very young and both of their scores were like 96. so I like these numbers because it always gives us a chance to kind of find out where we are compared to where we potentially maybe someday could get to but probably not if you’re getting older like me but I like the game of it I like to know the values and I’d like to always improve my VO2 max.

So when you’re burning fuel in your body you need oxygen and to increase your VO2 max you also need to look at a couple other things like your CO2 your carbon dioxide as well as your lactic acid which is is generated as a byproduct because CO2 allows the oxygen to actually go in deep into the tissues so it’s not just about oxygen and then also the lactic acid if that builds up too much it’s not cleared that can prevent you from exercising and breathing because of the ph. and what it does to your muscles so top athletes that have developed their mitochondria and made their mitochondria really efficient and have increased and stretched the capacity or using absorbing oxygen and getting rid of lactic acid kind of bulletproof themselves against disease.

So it’s good measurement to see where you are in evaluating your overall health you know when you go to a doctor you don’t go to your doctor to get healthy it’s to go there to get rid of a symptom but that doesn’t necessarily increase your health in fact it could worsen your health you’re put on a medication in fact it camouflages some underlying cause and they just don’t look at improving your health so today

03_ How To Increase Longevity By Increasing Your VO2 Max!

let’s just run down the list of all the things you can do to increase this VO2 max which is a great measurement of your health as well as your capacity to live a long time number one just doing more exercise more exercise training will increase your VO2 max specifically when you do high intensity interval training there’s a really good book it’s called Making Waves by Irving Dardic now this book is based on a really great principle of working with nature.

Nature or the universe works on Cycles okay rhythms everything is in a cycle you have the night and day sun cycle you have seasons I mean everything in nature everything in your body from pulse rate blood pressure hormones temperature so you want to align your exercise with this pattern of a cycle versus a sustained type exercise which apparently is not as healthy especially because it raises cortisol versus an interval type of exercise where you do these sudden bursts of high intensity with this rest back and forth cycle that works with the body and it’s very therapeutic.

That’s also why intermittent fasting is a great cyclic thing too versus constantly snacking and eating all day long I mean this might be hard to believe but there are some people who get so hungry in the middle of the night they have to get up and go eat something I mean that is just to be extreme bad so the more we can actually look at nature and work with nature uh the better we’re going to be so number two increasing our CO2 tolerance okay that can increase our VO2 max.

So, we can do that with nasal breathing because when we restrict air through our sinuses we increase more CO2 which actually helps increase more oxygen we need this CO2 to alter the pH just slightly to acidify and allow the oxygen to be released this is why there’s so many complications with just pure oxygen itself and to increase CO2 tolerance you can also do various exercises holding your breath number three increasing your lactic acid tolerance just by exercising high intensity interval training you can increase the clearance and tolerance of lactic acid.

But, there’s also something else and that is taking or making sure you have enough B1 thiamine, thiamine helps get rid of lactic acid this is why when someone is deficient in B1 they can develop lactic acidosis or their body tends to hold lactic acid and I had that problem when I was consuming so much fine carbs I started getting restless leg syndrome I couldn’t sleep at night and that would be a perfect example of filling up too much lactic acid in the muscle and number four hypoxic training and this is also kind of a version of what I just mentioned with the CO2 tolerance or improving that but hypoxic training is you can do that through restricting air breathing while you’re exercising or exercising at higher altitudes athletes that do that generate much greater capacity for holding oxygen and their white blood cells are much larger all right number five respiratory muscle training.

So, this is just training to strengthen the muscles that are involved with breathing like your diaphragm you have inspiratory muscle training which is uh training breathing in your capacity of expanding your lungs then you have expiratory muscle training which you’re doing exercises to get rid of all the air in your lungs so this type of training can be done with a very inexpensive device that restricts your air this restrictive mouth device which allows you to do this training and start to strengthen your lung capacity which can greatly help um people with weak lungs whether they have COPD chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or they even had a past lung problem and they need to strengthen their lungs this can help.

Number six plyometric training this is where you’re doing short bursts of exercise like maybe you’re jumping on a platform back and forth like explosive short burst of exercise and I like to do this with um just with an ax chopping down a tree or chopping a log in half it’s explosive it’s a great plyometric Works your upper body and then also hopping on a platform there’s many different types of Plyometrics you can do I’ve written articles on this.

That’s another way to greatly increase your VO2 max then you also have something called Fart lick training which involves while you’re running you’re speeding up your pace or you’re slowing down your pace throughout this exercise so it’s kind of like interval training but you’re doing it sporadically you’re just increasing and decreasing the intensity of that workout will run then you also have something called cross training right that’s like combining swimming running and biking and just changing it up that’s really good to build up this VO2 max.

Now, there are three additional things that are don’t involve exercise that can help your VO2 max and that is sleeping right because if you’re not sleeping I don’t care how much exercise you do you’re not going to be able to increase your VO2 max because your body is too tired and it can’t repair so more sleep eight or even nine hours greatly help you making sure you never over train making sure that you recover from your workouts which is so important and so many people neglect that and in fact I neglected that for years because I didn’t understand the importance of this recovery I didn’t understand it you’re going to kind of level out at a certain amount of fitness if you don’t recover.

So, letting your body recover between exercise and also from a genetic level some people um a problem with inflammatory genes and so if they over train they naturally just are going to take longer to recover and if they exercise too quickly they’re not going to get anywhere they’re going to minimize their progress.

So make sure that you fully rest and get to a point where your body no longer sore before you start another exercise but in the meantime you can always do hiking and low level type things like walking and of course 11 your diet which can greatly improve your vot max because if you’re eating the wrong foods you’re going to limit Your Capacity to hit that geek performance and I’m talking about ketogenic diet and what ketones can do for the efficiency of your mitochondria which is where it all happens okay as well as doing intermittent fasting which I also mentioned.