#159: 😮💨🏃🏻♀️ How To Measure VO2 Max Without All the Fancy Equipment
And Why It Could Be Your Most Important Health Marker
Hey friends,
Last week as part of my Longevity Wednesday, and a side event during Web Summit, I gave a talk “Can Psychedelics Slow, and Even Reverse, Aging?”
It’s the updated talk from when I wrote about this topic for Nina’s Notes #150.
In the talk, I covered the latest research on psilocybin and Parkinson’s disease, how psilocybin extended lung cell lifespan and lifespan and appearance in aged mice, a new clinical study investigating psilocybin and immersive gaming for stroke recovery, and psychedelics for trauma and end of life acceptance.
I’ll be giving this talk again in Cascais on December 11, 2025 with Female Founders Breakfast. My sure you are subscribed to my newsletter and follow me on LinkedIn
Xo,
Nina
P.S. I recorded this episode and you can watch it over on my YouTube Channel here
💬 In this note:
😮💨🏃🏻♀️ How To Measure VO2 Max Without All the Fancy Equipment
📚 Perfection
⚡️ Asking ChatGPT The Key to Longevity
😮💨🏃🏻♀️ How To Measure VO2 Max Without All the Fancy Equipment
Photo by VO2 Master on Unsplash
What is VO2 Max?
VO2 max is a measure of your fitness, and a powerful predictor of your healthspan and lifespan.
VO2 max means the maximum (max) volume (V) of oxygen (O2) your body consumes while exercising.
A high VO2 max is associated with a lower risk of disease and increased longevity.
Why Is It Important?
Your muscle cells need oxygen to create the main energy source in your body, ATP (adenosine triphosphate).
The more oxygen you can inhale and supply to your muscles effectively, the more ATP your muscles produce which fuels and powers your workout.
If your VO2 max is high, it means your heart and lungs are more effectively supplying blood to your muscles, and that your muscles are efficiently extracting and using oxygen from your blood.
According to Dr. Peter Attia, a leading longevity guru and author of the best-selling book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, “when looking at VO2 max in relation to all-cause mortality, we see a very clear trend.”
Dr. Attia claims that “simply bringing your VO2 max from ‘low’ (bottom 25th percentile) to ‘below average’ (25th to 50th percentile) is associated with a 50% reduction in all-cause mortality.
When you go from ‘low’ to ‘above average’ (50th to 75th percentile) the risk reduction is closer to 70%.”
How You Can Test VO2 Max
The most accurate VO2 max measurement happens in an exercise medicine lab, wearing a heart rate monitor and a mask to measure the oxygen you’re taking in and the carbon dioxide you are exhaling while running on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike.
But….do you need all this fancy equipment to measure VO2 max?
No, you actually don’t need specialized equipment to learn your VO2 max.
Other than athletes, most people don’t need their exact VO2 max, and there are other ways to estimate it.
One way to estimate it is to do the Cooper Test, which measures your cardiovascular fitness by testing how far an individual can run or walk in a 12-minute period.
What you’ll need:
A way to record your distance - A track with clearly marked distance. Alternatively, you can perform the test on a treadmill, but raise the incline to 1% to simulate outdoor running.
A timer
Begin with a short warm-up of 10-15 minutes of low to moderate strenuous activity before getting started.
After the warmup, run or walk as far as you can in 12 minutes.
Calculating your Cooper Test Results to get VO2max:
Kilometers: VO2max = (22.351 x kilometers) - 11.288
Miles: VO2max = (35.97 x miles) - 11.29
What range should you be in?
Just based on distance, here’s where your cardiovascular fitness falls:
If you have a smartwatch from brands like Apple, Garmin, Samsung, and Polar, then you already have a VO2 max estimation as a standard feature on your wrist.
Smartwatches use heart rate and motion sensors, these devices track various physical activities such as running, swimming, cycling, and hiking to estimate VO2 max levels.
You can then use this to track your VO2 max over time with many data points.
How to Boost Your VO2 Max
If your VO2 max is low, don’t worry - you can raise it!
In general, cardiorespiratory fitness can be boosted through healthy lifestyle choices and regular physical activity.
You can improve your VO2 max by:
Endurance training
Interval training
Sprint interval training
Endurance Training
Endurance training, also called aerobic training, involves sustained physical activity at moderate intensity over extended periods.
Think running, cycling, swimming, or brisk walking for 30-60 minutes at a pace where you can still hold a conversation.
This type of training strengthens your heart muscle, allowing it to pump more blood with each beat.
It also increases the number of capillaries in your muscles, improving oxygen delivery, and boosts the number and efficiency of mitochondria - the powerhouses of your cells where oxygen is used to produce ATP.
Aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week, spread across several sessions.
Interval Training
Interval training alternates between periods of higher-intensity exercise and recovery periods at lower intensity.
For example, you might run hard for 3-4 minutes, then jog easily for 3 minutes, and repeat this cycle 4-6 times.
This approach pushes your cardiovascular system harder than steady-state cardio, forcing your heart and lungs to adapt to changing demands.
The recovery periods allow you to sustain higher overall training intensity than you could maintain continuously.
Research shows interval training can improve VO2 max more efficiently than continuous moderate exercise alone.
Sprint Interval Training (SIT)
Sprint interval training takes things up another notch with very short bursts of all-out effort - typically 20-30 seconds - followed by longer recovery periods of 2-4 minutes.
Despite the shorter total exercise time, SIT can produce significant improvements in VO2 max.
A typical session might include just 4-6 sprints but deliver powerful cardiovascular adaptations.
This high-intensity approach is particularly time-efficient but also more demanding, so it’s best to start gradually and ensure you have a solid fitness base first.
Why Increase your VO2 Max?
Just exercise alone can boost your immune system, lower your risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and colon cancer.
But if you also increase your VO2 max, you can even further reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and stroke.
Better fitness improves your sleep and quality of life.
VO2 Max is a Powerful Predictor of Longevity
Luckily, VO2 max is highly modifiable through consistent training, regardless of your starting point.
Improving your cardiovascular fitness through a combination of endurance work, intervals, and high-intensity training is one of the most impactful investments you can make in your longevity.
Start where you are, test your baseline, take steps each day to watch your fitness, and your future will improve.
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📚 Book of the Week
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
Translation from Italian to English by Sophie Hughes
Rating: ★★★★★
Please raise your hand if you feel personally attacked by Vincenzo Latronico 🙋🏽♀️
Perfection is a story of an ex-pat couple, Anna and Tom, living an aesthetic life in Berlin.
Working from home as freelance graphic designers, Anna and Tom, make a great living, spend a majority of their time gallery hopping with other ex-pats from southern Europe (Italy, Spain, or Greece).
When they go out of town, they can rent their flat within seconds through an unnamed california-based booking platform.
And of course, even after Anna and Tom seem to live in Berlin for nearly 20 years, they still can’t really speak German (but they do speak it better than their friends).
Vincenzo - why do you cut so so deep?
When Anna and Tom tire of the Berlin winters and feel the city has changed, with too much English being spoken, where do they head to next?
Lisbon.
They choose f*king Lisbon.
How the hell did Vincenzo nail the Berlin ex-pat experience so thoroughly?
I feel like he lived my exact life.
Reading this book made me feel nostalgic, yet confronted, he cultivated feelings of guilt and disconnect that are so very true.
Reviewers say it is a modern version of Georges Perec’s Things: A Story of the Sixties With A Man Asleep - so that’s next on my reading list.
This was a reader recommendation by Abi. Thanks Abi! Abi runs the Minoa Berlin Bookstore Substack - Check it out for charming tales from a beautiful Berlin bookstore.
⚡️ Check This Out
Someone asked ChatGPT how to live to 140.
The answer?
Low level of chronic stress.
ChatGPT said, it’s not genetics, it’s not exercise, it’s not diet.
If you are under constant stress, you will die young.
ChatGPT goes on to explain that chronic stress is the internal conflict between who you are and who you try to appear to be.
If you don’t live your own life, your body stays in survival mode all the time.
When you are in survival mode, you have excess cortisol circulating in your body.
Chronic exposure of cortisol to your blood vessels, immune system and brain will destroy it.
ChatGPT said that the reason people in Okinawa, Japan (one of the ‘blue zones’) live so long, is because they live in harmony with themselves.
ChatGPT also gave some hard truths tied to loss of life years:
Do you hate your job but do it for money? = -15 years
Do you live with someone you don’t love, out of fear of being alone? = -10 years
Do you surround yourself with people who drain your energy? = -8 years
Every day in a toxic environment accelerates aging at the cellular level.
The final ChatGPT longevity tip:
Stop ‘saving it for later.’
Most people postpone life “until I retire,” but they arrive sick, exhausted and without energy.
Live today as you plan to do in retirement.
For a large language model, I have to say that ChatGPT gets it.
🔮 Cool Job Opportunities
Stride combines advanced diagnostics, expert coaching, and precision supplements to build the first integrated preventative health membership. Bootstrapped to £4.5m revenue since mid-2024. They’re looking for a commercial lead embedded in health & wellness to scale their practitioner network. Reach them at hr@getstride.com. (UK, Remote)
Dorina is exploring co-founder or chief-of-staff roles with founders building in health, energy, or regeneration, and ready to join an early-stage team. I turn complexity into clarity, spot solutions fast, and get things moving. People value how I bring energy, systemic insight, and focus to every challenge. Reach her doringdorina@gmail.com (Munich, preferred working style in person / hybrid)
Interested in connecting the longevity boom with the rise of sauna culture? My friend Philip is building a B2B2C sauna marketplace and looking for a GTM cofounder. Reach him at philip@tipsiti.com. (Remote)
Heros is building an outcome-driven health optimization & longevity platform: closed-loop care from labs to daily habits. They are hiring a founding COO to own ops, networks, and execution. Apply here. (Berlin, Remote)
Are you hiring? Want to share your job listing with Nina’s Notes? Send me an email: hi@ninapatrick.xyz
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