peter attia
Obsessed with family, archery, racing cars, Ayrton Senna, DFW, RPF, Secretariat, self-exp, CGM, fasting, rapamycin, mTOR, AMPK, autophagy, …
bit.ly/TheDrivePodcas
Follow him at https://www.instagram.com/peterattiamd/
First 5 Minutes Of Automated Transcript:
00:00
eight different ways that people talk
00:02
about zone two in fact just prior to
00:04
hopping on this uh instagram thing um
00:07
i was on a call with some other doctors
00:10
and and this question came up which is
00:12
well
00:12
my patients keep asking me what is zone
00:14
two and do you define it by heart rate
00:16
and
00:16
what does this mean and it’s important
00:18
to understand that the zone two that i’m
00:20
referring to
00:21
is a is a very pure definition it’s a
00:24
physiologic
00:25
definition frankly it’s a cellular
00:27
definition
00:28
um so there are uh ways that people just
00:31
say look zone two is eighty percent of
00:33
your maximum heart rate or
00:35
zone two is a certain percent of your
00:38
maximum power output or what we might
00:41
even call your functional threshold
00:42
power
00:44
i’m referring to something totally
00:46
different and it is a
00:48
cellular definition which is the
00:51
highest level of energy you can put out
00:54
while
00:55
keeping lactate below
00:58
two millivolt okay that’s a lot let’s
01:01
explain what it means
01:03
so uh anytime you’re undergoing cellular
01:06
respiration
01:08
um your body is basically converting
01:11
glucose or fatty acids into atp
01:15
and that process can be done very
01:17
efficiently
01:18
with oxygen but as the demand for atp
01:22
which is energy gets higher and higher
01:24
and higher your body has to
01:26
start making trade-offs and it has to
01:29
start
01:30
going quicker than it would like to
01:33
and not just utilize the mitochondria
01:35
and doing this process
01:36
outside of the mitochondria and in doing
01:39
so one of the byproducts of that is
01:41
lactate so we use lactate as a proxy for
01:43
any time your body is exceeding the
01:45
capacity of the mitochondria
01:47
and once you exceed about two millimole
01:51
of lactate
01:52
which is not a very high amount
01:55
certainly higher than you are at rest
01:57
but nowhere near what you would be
01:58
exerting when you do an all-out effort
02:01
you have sort of exceeded the threshold
02:03
of the mitochondria to stay
02:05
in an equilibrium where it can clear the
02:08
amount of lactate it produces
02:10
so that’s how i define zone two and when
02:13
i say i do
02:13
i don’t mean that this is my definition
02:15
i’m saying that’s the definition that i
02:16
use
02:17
personally and with my patients okay
02:21
a question that is not actually posed
02:23
there but i think it’s worth
02:24
just before we get into how often should
02:26
i do it is why does this matter
02:28
um it’s my belief that this is the most
02:31
important place to be training your
02:33
mitochondria
02:34
and if we understand that mitochondrial
02:37
function
02:38
and the deterioration of mitochondrial
02:39
function is one of the hallmarks of
02:41
aging
02:42
then anything we can do to
02:45
delay that process and enhance
02:47
mitochondrial function is going to be a
02:48
benefit
02:49
okay so how often should i do it well
02:52
we don’t really know the answer and it
02:54
probably depends in part on how
02:56
fit you are coming in so
02:59
if you take somebody who is relatively
03:02
deconditioned
03:04
they might only be able to accommodate
03:06
30 minutes
03:07
three times a week and by the way
03:11
their exertion level is going to be
03:13
amazingly
03:14
low so i prefer to do all of my zone 2
03:18
on a bike
03:19
and the reason for that is on a bike you
03:22
have
03:23
watts watts are the ultimate
03:26
metric of output which is not to say you
03:29
can’t
03:30
be just as um you know precise when
03:33
you’re using a treadmill
03:34
um but on an indoor bike trainer
03:37
uh you know putting my bicycle on this
03:39
thing called a wahoo kicker
03:40
i get you know just perfectly precise
03:43
information
03:44
and i like to really think about
03:46
everything in watts per kilo
03:48
so how many watts am i generating
03:50
divided by my
03:51
mass in kilos and when you look at
03:54
really really unhealthy people people
03:57
who are metabolically very sick
04:00
they would have a zone two threshold
04:02
meaning they exceed that two millimole
04:04
uh probably by the time they’re at one
04:07
watt per kilo
04:09
of activity conversely when you look at
04:12
the
04:12
absolute fittest of the fit so if you
04:15
look at professional
04:16
cyclists who would be about as fit as
04:18
any athlete could possibly be
04:21
they’re actually going to be closer to
04:22
about 4 watts per kilo
04:25
in terms of how much work their bodies
04:28
can do
04:29
while still keeping lactate below two
04:31
millimole
04:33
so personally i do about
source
