You Won't Believe What Experts Say Is the Best Measure of Your Health – Find Out Now!
If you could pick one measure to evaluate your health, what would you pick? Blood pressure? Cholesterol? These are commonly measured by your GP, but there is something that is more informative: maximal aerobic capacity, otherwise known as VO₂max.
This measure tells you your maximum (max) rate (V) of oxygen (O₂) uptake and use during exercise. The greater this is, the better your health. In fact, VO₂max is the best predictor of your risk, at a given point in time, of getting chronic diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes or certain cancers, and the best predictor of your chances of living a long and healthy life. Intuitively, this does not make much sense: most people go through life without ever needing to reach their VO₂max.
A good or a bad measure of performance?
There is a wide variation in VO₂max between people, mainly explained by genetics and exercise history. Elite endurance athletes can have VO₂max values about three times higher than inactive people (90ml/kg/min vs 30ml/kg/min). The highest documented VO₂max is 97.5ml/kg/min in an elite cyclist. The correlation between VO₂max and exercise performance is good when you look at people with a wide range of VO₂max values.
VO₂max and health
Many studies have demonstrated that the risk of cardiovascular disease and early death is much lower in people with high VO₂max compared with people with low VO₂max. People who manage to improve their VO₂max over time will lower their risk of disease and live longer. Contrary to expectation, though, this does not seem to be the case for people who manage to lose weight over time.
The logical question to ask is why VO₂max is so important for long-term health. This question has largely been ignored by researchers, and there are no clear answers. One hypothesis is that VO₂max is a proxy for the amount of blood in the body. A greater volume of blood allows more oxygen to be transported to the muscles and so leads to a higher VO₂max.
To improve your VO₂max, the only feasible and legal way is regular exercise, with high-intensity interval training being more effective than continuous moderate intensity training. Recent studies have also demonstrated that robust improvements in VO₂max can be achieved with very low volumes of intense exercise.
VO₂max may not always be the best measure of exercise performance, but it is undoubtedly important for our health, and we should all maintain exercise routines and work hard to improve it.
