The most important number for your health (feat. @MedlifeCrisis)

Thanks to Dr Rohin Francis aka Medlife Crisis for the chat! If you’d like to watch us trade places (we literally swapped seats), there’s a video over on his channel where the doc interviews me about ageing biology. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkEHvSWeMzU And hi to anyone from Team Crisis finding this channel for the first time! I hope you’ll smash that subscribe button because I know how much you love following health influencers like me and Rohin.

That moustache. Wow. Not enough comments appreciate it's magnificence.

Medlife crisis fans representing 👍🔥

I am 74 with a resting heartrate of 55 doing about 600 mins cycling / week split equally between zone 2 and above. Favourite Garmin stat is fitness age at 61.5!

Took me a while to notice that something was wrong with the skeleton 😂

My Apple Watch 4 consistently estimates my VO2max to be below average, at around 35, which is weird since I exercise quite a lot. Then I did a proper VO2max test and my result was above 50. So yes, those wearables' VO2max results can be quite off the mark.

My resting heart rate is 49 average over a year and my sleeping average is 43 and dips to 36 when sleeping. I cycle about 5 hours a week on average mostly high intensity. But when i used to vape my resting heart rate was 63 and i still did the same amount of exercise then. If you use nicotine daily and care for your health, you know what to do

At the age of 51 my resting heart rate is in the 50s. I used to see high 40s about 3 years back but that not the case now. I do cardio at least 3 days a week every single week since mid February 2015. Which was the year my father passed away from diabetes. Seeing all he went through his final year from surgeries, amputations, dementia .. was what got me started and kept me going.

Excellent video! I was just obsessing over my resting heart rate this week.

Great video, everyone using a smart watch needs to see this

How did I not know about such a great and well put together channel? ❤

I'm 63 and spend about 11 hours a week at the gym doing a variety of aerobic, core, and strength classes. Plus I take frequent brisk walks of anywhere between 2-5 miles. I don't have a wearable and don't have a particular desire for one. All I know is I feel effin' fantastic. I have no idea what people my age mean when they say they feel old. I did just take my resting pulse rate and it was 59 bpm. It would be cool to know my VO2max, though.

Excellent content, thank you !!

I appreciate your attention to data and details, and I look forward to the rest of this wearables series. A fantastic resource for this is Andy Galpin. He gave great info during a recent guest episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast on how to assess your fitness: protocols, minimal and preferable numbers, etc.

as a 25 year old smoker and non exerciser my resting heart rate was high 70s in June 2022, as of December 2022 my resting heart rate is high 50s. It’s strange because in that time period i haven’t changed a single thing, still smoking and not exercising, eating the same meals and weighing the same

Really useful information, thank you

Was looking at the numbers from my apple watch while watching this video, and it's interesting to correlate resting heart rate with what I was doing at the time

Amazing video. Thank you for putting so much work in and making things clear

Almost all the times my watch has thought I'm exercising hard enough to report a VO2 max have been when I've been carrying heavy grocery bags home from the supermarket, making me seem a lot less fit than I am. Or at least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Calculating an accurate VO2 Max using running data is inherently more difficult for the reasons you mentioned, but devices like the Garmin are getting better at it (as you note) as GPS accuracy and OHR sensors improve, but there have also improved with the introduction of algorithms to calculate running power. It's my understanding that VO2 Max estimates using cycling data are much more reliable because it requires a power meter. The device is not guessing based on pace, which can be influenced by a massive number of variables any more. It's using a metric that provides a much tighter number. Obviously, the calculation can only be as good as the data provided, a dual-sided (or total power) PM is going to have higher confidence than a one-sided. All that said, the value in almost all of the data that is captured, calculated, or estimated is in looking at the trends more than the actual number.