Norman Lazarus is not acting his age
VO MAX IS AS GOOD AN INDICATOR OF HEALTH AS IT IS FITNESS, SAYS NORMAN
What I hope you’ve deduced by now – and you’ve had quite long enough! – is that I’m involved in research on healthy ageing at King’s College London. The human ageing process only begins to truly bite when you near 75, give or take a few years depending on your own individual physiology. Just wait until you get to 85, like me, because my rides are slowing exponentially now.
Enough moaning. About eight years ago, when I was a mere 77 years old, I went through all the research procedures to determine how I shaped up for a cycling oldie. I was overdue another so last month it was time for a follow-up MOT. Here’s what we found.
My VO2 max - this is the maximum amount of oxygen our bodies can make use of, and measured in millilitres per minute (ml/kg/min) in relation to body weight - has dropped from 42 to 31. That's a drop of just under three per cent per year. Wow! It’s really not surprising that I can’t climb like I used to anymore!
Despite the drop, I remain healthy and there are really two ways of looking at VO2 max. The first is that the higher the VO2 max the better we can perform. However, this view of VO2 max isn't the primary focus for us oldies. VO2 max isn't only an indicator of physical ability, it's also the gold standard physiological measurement of predicting the probability of all-cause mortality. Meaning?
Well, there are all kinds of nasty diseases out there trying to wipe us out and it has been found that the higher the VO2 max value is for one’s age the lower the probability of getting a disease. The value of VO2 max that gives us protection is lower than the value that determines if you're going to be a champion or not. The best scientific paper I know that demonstrates this suggests a VO2 max value of about 38 is fine for people of around 50 years of age. Unfortunately, there's little data on the true oldies. However, you can see that my value of 31 is in a similar ballpark to 38. At 85 years of age I would guess that this value is fine because, although I cannot race uphill, I have not developed any nasty diseases. In other words I demonstrate the fact that the protective effect of exercise is obtained well below the VO2 max value that's necessary to be a champ. The message is clear. By all means, work hard at your fitness and push up your VO2 max but you don’t need to raise it through the roof to get that protection from illness.
The other point to remember is that we're all different, so ideal VO2 max levels will differ between oldies. There is insufficient data in the scientific literature to give a definitive value for each and every person. That just shows how little we know. Don’t get too hung up on this point. If you're exercising and are free from those diseases that are caused by lifestyle then you are doing just fine. No need to push your exercise to a level that will wear you down.
In order to examine how much my muscles have diminished in eight years, at my MOT a small snip of muscle was taken from my vastus lateralis, that lovely big muscle that sits on the outside of the thigh. How much? Well around 200 milligrams from a 2000 gram muscle, about 1/10,000th. I went cycling the next day.
Getting an MOT at 85 or indeed at any age gives mixed feelings. From my own perspective there's a mixture of fascination to see how the practical effects of getting older affect the body and then being the embodiment of those changes.
The testing I undertook took three days and includes balance studies, oxygen delivery tests, and fiendish assessments of mental abilities. Fancy getting involved? We at King’s College will be happy to book you in. We’re looking for male and female cyclists, either between the ages of 18-35 and aged 60 or over. If you’re interested email healthy-ageing@ kcl.ac.uk for more information.
“The higher the VO2max value is for one’s age the lower the probability of getting a nasty disease”