What is VO2 Max and How Can It Increase My Lifespan?

Feb. 16

Understand what your VO2 max score means and how you can improve it for a longer, healthier life

VO2 max is one of the most powerful predictors of health and longevity. It’s the best metric to improve if you want to live longer.

So, what is VO2 max?

Put simply, VO2 max is the maximum rate (Volume) of oxygen (O₂) your body is able to use during exercise. It is a way of determining your cardiorespiratory fitness. Low cardiorespiratory fitness is strongly associated with a higher risk of death. Research has shown ¹ that increasing your cardiorespiratory endurance (improving your VO2 max score) is associated with adding more (healthy) years to your life.

To test VO2 max, we use an apparatus that contains sensors for both oxygen (what we inhale and use for energy) and CO2 (what we exhale as waste) to compare the difference between the air going in and the air going out. This gets us an ongoing measure of the amount of oxygen that’s being used up. We pair this with an exercise test on a treadmill or stationary bike that gets progressively harder and harder. When your VO2 plateaus, your VO2 max has been achieved.

Your VO2 score and what it means

Knowing your VO2 score helps you understand your current fitness level. And the best part of VO2 max? It’s a trainable metric, which means you can improve your score and your fitness level with training.

Take a look at the tables below (the first is for women, the second for men). By moving your score one category to the right, from “above average” to “high” for instance, you reduce your risk of all-cause mortality by more than 40%. Each step change is more powerful than if you went from being a lifelong smoker to never having smoked before, or from having a coronary artery disease to not, or from having type 2 diabetes² to not having diabetes. This is a big deal.

Even if you’re not a top-level athlete, knowing your VO2 max is very important in terms of longevity. This is because our VO2 max declines as we age. However, how much our VO2 max declines with age is highly dependent on how active we remain as we get older.

“Each step change is more powerful than if you went from being a lifelong smoker to never having smoked before, or from having a coronary artery disease to not, or from having type 2 diabetes to not having diabetes. This is a big deal. ”

Table 1. VO2 Max categorization for women across all 5 groupings and up to age 80. Reproduced from: Mandsager K, et al., 2018 (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.3605)

Table 2. VO2 Max categorization for men across all 5 groupings and up to age 80. Reproduced from: Mandsager K, et al., 2018 (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.3605)

How to improve your VO2 max

It’s clear that VO2 max is for overall health and longevity, but how do you improve it? The short answer to that question is exercise. The more you exercise, the higher that metric will be.

With that in mind, it is important to do so under the guidance of an exercise professional to help achieve your goals safely and to have clearance from your doctor if you haven’t exercised before.

If you’re interested in knowing your VO2 max or making improvements to your cardiorespiratory fitness, give us a call, we’d love to chat.