When he quotes the VO2max studies, he talks about lifespan, how higher values always confer an edge on longevity and apparently there isn’t even an upper limit to the gains. I’m pretty sure I’ve listened to him long and attentively enough to understand what he’s saying. The cherry on top seems to be that the increases in lifespan are high quality years, so extra lifespan via vo2max gains subsumes good healthspan, in his book. I’ve heard him say, make a list of what you want to be able to do in your “marginal decade” to reverse engineer how hard you need to train NOW in order to land there in the end, through the inevitable ravages of time.
Now I understand and sympathize with that way of thinking, but it’s really borrowed lock stock and barrel from business jargon—he reminds me of the way heads of sales speak when they try to optimize their pipeline to hit their quotas. Human biology is more complex than that. The longest lived people typically didn’t do anything remotely as intense as he suggest they ought to have to make it into their 90s or 100s at a functional state. There’s confounders that muddy the waters in the relationship between Vo2max and longevity, one of them being the role of weight in the denominator of Vo2max. Other factors are metrics of wear and tear that could be heading way beyond the hormetic zone while Vo2max is still improving, that undo or at least attenuate the extension which Vo2max confers on longevity.
And there’s also such things I can think of, though they don’t get into in the video, as being conditioned to being deconditioned. Anecdotally I see amazing athletes who keep going at a high level until injuries or the end of their sport careers put them out to pasture and their health just deteriorates—it’s as if their bodies don’t know how to BE without the constant stimulus of high intensity exercise. I know this may sound like an absurd parallel but from having had 5 full term pregnancies I know from personal experience there’s such a thing, for women, as being in “pregnancy shape.” The first time I went from naturally thin and of active metabolism to really overweight—it’s as if my body didn’t know how to handle the changes in hormones and appetite and everything that goes with it. Every subsequent time it was easier, I gained less weight and lost it faster on the other end. This time, even though I’m fine weight wise, many things are bothering me closer to how it was the first time, and I don’t think it’s because I’m older (because I’m not that old) but because my body had taken a break of 6 years from doing this and it had to find its bearings again.
There are people whose bodies are conditioned at being fairly deconditioned. I don’t mean being obese couch potatoes but being fairly active at a sub athletic level, just walking around places and carrying heavy objects now and then in everyday life, and they can maintain that level with very minimal drop off right till the very end. Some of it may be unknown mitochondrial adaptation at chugging along without rocking the boat in either direction. Some of it may be the prevention of wear and tear on joints. Who knows? It’s hard to argue with data on healthy centarians though.
We do know that the gains in adaptations form exercise are very short lived unless CONSTANTLY maintained—stop doing anything at all for 3-4 weeks and you lose most of it. 12 weeks and you’re considered deconditioned, same as someone who starts from scratch. And that’s no wonder, really, if Vo2max depends entirely on mitochondrial health and mitochondria turn over every few days.
As I said in my original comment, we should pursue exercise because it makes us fit and stronger and healthier and it’s a better way to live than lounging around. NOT under any delusion that it’s the best investment of effort for maximizing lifespan. I would make the same tradeoff as you about living only to my 80s but fully active vs petering off miserably at 100, but nowhere does Attia present that as a tradeoff in his analysis of what Vo2max does for longevity. He says you can have your venison stick and eat it too.
If you’ve listened to him longer to know otherwise, please provide a source.
All I see is the promotion of this metric as a holy grail of longevity.
Anyone pursuing aggressive exercise for life is doing it because they love that lifestyle and that’s great. Seems to be good for them too all things equal. But no one can outrun the grim reaper, whether the running be literal or figurative. Someone who hates that kind of lifestyle could probably reap the same life and healthspan benefits by other shortcuts and would be wrong to think he’s missing out by not investing many hours on end of serious training every week.
