Lung power











Maria Dalamagka

Lung power is the number-one predictor of how long you’ll live. How well you breathe determines how long you’ll stay active and healthy.
The medical journal Chest did a 29-year follow up to the Buffalo Health Study, which followed over 1,100 people up to age 89. They found that the better your lungs work, the less likely you are to die of any cause. The correlation was even stronger for heart disease.
This makes me wonder about all those workout “gurus.” They keep telling you to do “cardio” which only wears down your heart and lungs. The studies prove that lungpower – not wearing down your heart with hours of aerobics – will keep you going.
Most doctors aren’t aware of this, either. They don’t bother to measure your lungpower during a doctor visit. Yet it’s easy to do, and I measure it at my clinic.
The best way to tell how powerful your lungs are is a measurement called VO2 max.
That’s because VO2 max measures the amount of oxygen your lungs can use while you’re exercising at your maximum capacity. And the more oxygen you can get to your body, the better your body works.
VO2 max is usually written in milliliters of volume per kilograms of body weight (ml/kg) because oxygen and energy needs are different depending on how big you are.
VO2 max typically declines with age.

The American Journal of Epidemiology looked at respondents from the famous Harvard Health study, which followed over 13,000 people for 15 years. They found that people live longer if they do vigorous exercises, but not if they only do light or moderate workouts.
And the risk of death kept getting lower and lower not for those who expended energy for the longest time, but who expended the most energy. In other words, intensity is the key to lowering the likelihood of death.

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