Rhonda Patrick

Yeah, it's something that in the past, I would say, two to three years, it kind of came on my radar as an important biomarker for longevity, right?

There's a variety of biomarkers that can be looked at.

And as you mentioned, even compared to something like grip strength, cardiorespiratory fitness seems to really shine in terms of being a good indicator of your overall health status.

When Levine was on the podcast, Dr. Lean was talking about, you know, it takes a certain amount of

Oxygen, like your cardiorespiratory fitness has to be a certain level just to sit down and have a conversation like we're having, right?

And if you're a sedentary person that really hasn't tried to improve their cardiorespiratory fitness, like at all, as you get older, because it does decline, like even maintaining that just...

Right.

Even above and beyond that, there's been just numerous studies that have looked at the correlation of VO2 max, cardiorespiratory fitness, and all-cause mortality.

One I've talked about, and I talked about with Levine as well, was a published study in JAMA Medical Journal in 2018, where I think it was like...

Participants that were involved in some, they were previous veterans.

And so they were sort of looked at according to their cardiorespiratory fitness.

And the people that were in the highest group had a five-year increased life expectancy compared to people in the lowest cardiorespiratory fitness group, which is pretty profound.

I mean, you're talking about five years.

Yeah.

But also, even if you looked at the people in the very highest group and you compared them to people in the high normal, so they were still like on the high normal end or doing good, like those people in the highest group had a 20% lower all-cause mortality.

So they were still doing better than the people that had a high normal cardiorespiratory friendliness.

But I think also what was really surprising to me in that study was that the people in that low cardiorespiratory fitness group had a mortality risk that was comparable or even worse than people with diseases that we know are clearly bad for your health, like type 2 diabetes, like heart disease, hypertension, even smokers.

So in other words, again, going back to this Dallas bedrest study as well, where being sedentary for three weeks was worse on your cardiovascular health than 30 years of aging.

It really drives home that point that when you're sedentary and your cardiorespiratory fitness is falling, you're

But it is a disease.