VO₂ max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during intense exercise. It is a great indicator of overall health.
Why test it? VO2 max reflects how efficiently your heart, lungs, and muscles work together to deliver and utilize oxygen- when do you go from aerobic to anaerobic activity. A higher VO₂ max means your body can generate more energy aerobically, which is essential for endurance and overall cardiovascular health.
What does V02 max tell you?
- It predicts heart health. VO₂ max is considered the gold standard for measuring cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF). Improving your cardiorespiratory fitness lowers risk of chronic diseases such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and premature death.
- Indicator of Longevity Research shows people with higher VO₂ max tend to live longer and have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. It’s one of the most powerful predictors of long-term health.
- Measures How Well Your Body Uses Oxygen VO₂ max reflects how effectively your heart pumps blood, how efficiently your lungs oxygenate it, and how well your muscles extract and use that oxygen. This makes it a comprehensive measure of cardiovascular performance.
- Helps Track Fitness Progress Because VO₂ max responds to training, it’s a useful benchmark for monitoring improvements in endurance, aerobic capacity, and overall fitness.
- Supports Better Training Decisions Knowing your VO₂ max can help you tailor workouts to improve aerobic efficiency, pace yourself better, and optimize training intensity.
To get an accurate test PREP IS CRITICAL to get valid measurement.
- You need to make an appointment for this test. You cannot just show up and do this test and get an accurate measurement.
- FASTING. You can have no food, caffeine, or stimulants for 4 hours. Ideally, we like to do this in the morning with an overnight fast. *If you eat before a VO2 max test, there is more blood glucose, so it will skew the CO2 level, so the data of fat vs. carbohydrate utilization is changed. Your VO2 max is still accurate.
- No exercise within 12 hours
- Water ok
- A regular prescribed med is okay. (if you are on a stimulant as part of diagnosis like ADD, it is part of your resting rate)
- Be consistent. When doing this testing, you want to always take the test (and any medications) at the same time. (If take med at 7 am, test at 9 am, keep consistent for future tests.)
The test itself:
We use a TREADMILL PROTOCOL:
- We tailor to your fitness level as well as physical limitations.
- Can’t run? We can do the test with walking and increasing the incline.
- If you are okay with running, we will adjust speed and incline.
- You should be wearing comfortable athletic gear. Women may wear a sport bra.
- You are wearing a mask. This is attached to a hose which measures your oxygen and CO2 outputs.
- You also wear a chest strap which comes in contact with your skin.
- You will be asked “was this a maximal effort?” at the end of your test.
- There is a movement recovery done for a couple of minutes of low intensity movement where we slow the speed and decrease the incline. This can be done without the mask. We just need your heart rate measurements.
How can Biohackr Health help?
First, we believe in this test. It helps you understand your health baseline. It also gives useful information of when you go from burning fat for energy to carbohydrates for energy. For many trying to lose weight, their ideal heart rate to burn fat is lower than what they do working out- they are targeting the wrong cardiac intensity. Once you know your baseline VO2, you can see if your exercise and interventions are working.
For endurance or elite athletes, we also have an extended VO2 test where you can see during a typical run how your body is processing- when should you hydrate? eat?
Improving your VO2 is a great goal. Why?
- A stronger heart pumps more blood per beat
- You have greater capillary density- more blood flow means more oxygen gets to the muscles
- Improved mitochondrial function. We at Biohackr Health talk about mitochondria frequently- mitochondria are in every cell in your body, and it is the “powerhouse” of the cell. It is why we focus on NAD and creatine in our clinics- better cellular health improves every system in your body.
- Better endurance and stamina
Contact us for an appointment today. This is part of our Biohacking 3 month comprehensive program, which includes resting metabolic rate, InBody scans, and more, or can be done as a stand alone measurement. The testing is done in our Palo Alto clinic currently, soon to open in San Francisco as well.