Performing High Intensity Intervals Twice a Week Can Help You Live Longer

Prior research has shown that even if you’re a well-trained runner, you can improve your VO₂ max—the benchmark of cardio fitness—by 3 percent after doing just four weeks of high intensity interval workouts twice a week.

Now, a landmark study shows that VO₂ bump will do more than let you crush the competition: You’ll also lower your risk of heart disease and premature death by about 3 percent.

Even better, you can get even greater early death and disease protection without the need for leg-sizzling intervals. You just need to move more.

In the largest study to date on cardiovascular fitness in healthy people, researchers from Sweden found that increasing your exercise and fitness levels is linked to living longer, no matter what your age or current fitness level.

To reach this conclusion, the study researchers examined data on first time cardiovascular events and death from any cause among 316,137 adults between the ages of 18 and 74, who had undergone health screening, including a VO₂ max cycling test, between 1995 and 2015.

They found that for each milliliter increase in VO₂ max, the risk of death from any cause and of a cardiovascular event like a heart attack dropped by 2.8 percent and 3.2 percent respectively.

VO₂ max is a measurement of your body’s ability to take oxygen from the air you’re huffing and puffing, deliver it to your muscles, and make the energy you need during exercise. The more oxygen you can use per minute, the fitter you are, and the higher your VO₂ max.

For reference, the average untrained adult will have a VO₂ max of about 40 milliliters per kilogram of weight per minute (ml/kg/min). Highly trained endurance athletes can have VO₂ max values that are about 10 milliliters higher. Your personal VO₂ max depends on your genes and your age, as VO₂max naturally declines over time.

But everyone can improve their VO₂ max with training. Obviously, if you’re already an Olympic-caliber athlete, you don’t have as much room for improvement. But the rest of us can raise our VO₂ max levels with interval training, or, if we’re not very active, just exercising at any intensity more frequently.

Either way, you’ll improve your longevity, said study author Elin Ekblom-Bak, Ph.D., of the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences in Stockholm in a press release.

“It is particularly important to note that an increase in fitness was beneficial regardless of the starting point,” said Ekblom-Bak in the release. “People in the lower range of VO₂ max will reduce their risk even more (9 percent), while those at the upper end of VO2 max will reduce their risk by 1 percent.”

The most precise way to measure your VO₂ max is in a laboratory where you run to complete exhaustion while wearing a breathing mask that captures and measures your every inhalation and exhalation. But you can get a good ballpark from online calculators like the one found at worldfitnesslevel.org that estimate your VO₂ max based on your age, resting heart rate, weight, waist circumference, and physical activity level.

But you don’t have to know your number to get started. If you move more and get fitter, that means you’ve improved your VO₂ max, and your longevity.

From: Bicycling US

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