Zone 2 Training & Mitochondrial Health: New Insights | Inigo San Millan | The Proof Clips EP #277

okay so if we come back to this idea of building your aerobic base how much of this would you say is influenced by mitochondrial function versus the amount of oxygen that we have available our V2 Max yeah that's another great question so um and this is something that we have learned a lot in in the last two three decades so um we used to to measure performance or predict Performance Based on V2 Max right and uh and it still it's it's a very good parameter because uh um um it's it's uh it represents the cardiorespiratory

adaptations to exercise but um definitely and and and that's for sure and this anybody can who who does a lot of testing physiological and metabolic testing can tell you that uh V2 Max is not um it doesn't discriminate right so it gets to a point that is so well expressed uh that uh it it doesn't make the difference and this is what we see all the time you you see two athletes with the same view too Max right so therefore um um yeah they're they supposedly are as good um and then one athlete is much

better than the other right and then you go at the cellular level right um and then you see that yes at that that that athlet at 350 Watts has eight millim of lactate and the other one has three or four right despite of the same V2 Max so so this is why V2 Max it's it's a it's a great surrogate for health of course and for Fitness no question right but um you know looking and this is from looking from from a cardiorespiratory standpoint and this is being the norm right for forever right V2 Max

but uh but looking now in in in the last two decades especially at the more cellular level we're seeing that that's what makes the difference and within the cellular level uh you know everything happens or or the the king of the or or of the cells or the queen because they come from The Mother We should say right um our mitochondria and when we're thinking about stimulating the mitochondria through Zone to training are we mostly thinking about improving the function of those mitochondria or are we also thinking about improving the number of mitochondria that are

found within muscle fibers that's a good question too and it's it's usually both right so we improve both the number and the function uh of mitochondria um uh definitely I I I I I believe and this is what we still need to do more and more research because there there are different studies showing things you know but uh I think that uh in my humble opinion is more the function uh but they usually go together right uh you see mandal content in type two diabetics or obese individuals is significantly lower than in in morally active

individuals and when you put uh those um um those athletes um to uh there is this great researcher that uh was from Pittsburgh at to Toledo he started doing uh these studies where with mandal function that was 20 years ago uh but not many people listen to him but he was looking at people with obesity and looking at the marand content in the muscle and after um I believe was like forgot six months or five months of aerobic training back in the days they still talk about aerobic training we still do right uh they improved

their uh they they they triple the number of mitochondria so in the same way that you reduce the number by being sedentary you can increase the number of mitochondria and the size they triple the number and the size of mandria and and and the function also was significantly improved so all things come together yeah so that's wor sort of UND underlining that we're not born with a set number of mitochondria that's fixed for life we can do something about this and if I heard correctly if we've lived one two three decades uh living a very

sedentary lifestyle and lost a bunch of mitochondria if we then commence exercise particularly specific exercise and do the right dose and frequency which we'll get into we can actually build new mitochondria and bring some of these back yeah absolutely and you know and this comes within the plasticity of skeletal muscle I mean we're still focusing on skeletal muscle right although it happens also in the heart and in the brain too but but uh the the plasticity of skeletal muscle it's extraordinary so uh yeah it can deteriorate uh over time for sure and it will if

you don't do exercise and and something that we see on the outside of of people who don't exercise but uh also it can improve significantly over time as we see also you know from the outside of people you know but imagine what happens in the inside right at the cellular level yeah there's in incredible amount of uh improvements that happened at the cellular level so yeah and it comes because yeah the the body at the end of the day is very wise and uh we uh humans we haven't evolved to become sedentary uh we are

uh our genes uh are still um you know made to be active right and being sedentary has been um a byproduct of progress as opposed to be the norm but uh unfortunately we've been growing uh you know with this notion then then and then being sary or healthy sedentary is been the norm and and doing physical being Physically Active is is is is been a control right or it's it's an intervention right with that the real intervention uh for for us humans as part of the evolution has been to become sedentary which is leading to

disease you know so this is why like yeah a lot of research data in medical research for decades they've been using as a control the healthy sedentary individuals when we know that the immense majority of those healthy sedentary um they they they are going to become um populations with diseases and we already we have a a very interesting study that um we we we are putting the manuscript together with a really cool findings of sedentary people who are healthy they don't have any clinical conditions and they already have significant metabolic dysregulations compared to people who

are active uh motorally active not Elite athletes so we already seeing that uh uh 15 20 years probably before they have some disease uh we already see signatures markers of metabolic dysfunction and mandal Decay right and one of those I'm assuming being lactate as an early predictor of disease yeah yeah lactate is neuro predictor uh we're looking do doing this by looking different markers in the muscle doing muscle biopsis right uh and and metabolomics we look at a lot of um metabolites that are happening in mitochondria and looking itself but mitochondrial function right where we

where we uh what we do is like we get a muscle biopsy and we inject it uh we we homogenize the mitochondria of of of of those subjects and we directly inject in Mand different substrates we inject fatty acids we inject carbohydrates um um amino acids and we see how mitochondria metabolize those right so we see there significant differences already in uh um in sedentary individuals and then also some Transporters that I cannot say yet until we don't publish it but there's a key transporter that uh um is significantly uh downregulated that that that can

be 10 years 15 years ahead of type two diabetes uh that is already uh a signature and could be a Hallmark uh of this population who are sedentary that's exciting sounds very promising I look forward to reading about that uh what you were talking about earlier about the sedentary Lifestyles we're living and the deterioration that occur that occurs with that um reminds me of a quote from Frank Booth I'm sure you you know him or have come across his work uh he said that the current Human Genome requires and expects us to be physically active

for normal functioning and I think a a prior guest Paul Taylor shared that with me on my show and it's kind of stuck in my mind we have already uh great examples of a very primitive uh civilizations that still exist in our world and there there's uh so there there especially two populations the the HDA Hunter gathers in Tanzania and also the simman hunter gather population in Bolivia right so they're very primitive populations uh they they they don't have any contact or they haven't had any contct forever with our with civilization they haven't even evolved

they have the same uh um uh tools and the same dresses as they had you know like a thousand years ago 2,000 years ago right um uh so and and then um um there there are a few researchers um there there two especially um um a ponter uh uh and uh and Kaplan who just went into these tribes and started to study the incidence of diseases as well as obesity body fat percentage uh their their habits how much time they were exercising a day and as well as what is what was their nutrition uh so

those are the real primitive civilizations right so um the rate of obesity among these populations was about 2% we're talking about now uh o overweight or obesity in our in our western or not not western or civilized world right is uh it's somewhere between 50 and 70% right uh type two diabetes in this population was 1% we're talking that in the us alone 52% of of of adults are pre-diabetic or diabetic already right um um and I and I always say that being pre-diabetic you know um is you already have the disease there's no term

such as being pre-pregnant or pregnant you're pregnant or you're not right so the same thing with pre diabetes they also have the lowest cardiovascular disease in atherosclerosis plaque percentage observed in any humans in the world right so uh and the life expectancy is in fact similar to the US the problem that they have is that um like uh the majority of fatalities that they have about 70% of fatalities are due to infections they don't have medications they don't have antibiotics right uh and then they have a lot of uh fatalities due to trauma accidents right

uh but only about 10% of their deaths are due to non-communicable diseases whereas in our population there's about 70% right uh due to uh um non-communicable diseases so and then the habits of these people uh they they're they're working between 110 and 135 140 minutes a day so uh you know the American Heart Association American Medical Association American I mean all these associations they're they're saying about the femal 150 minutes a week right that's pretty much what they do a day right um and then we look at their diet and they're they're pretty much plant-based

diet they they they're Hunter gathered populations they hunt whenever they can probably like the the people in the paleolitic right we have the idea the people in the palic all the wor I mean 180 M or six foot tall and uh uh and super strong you know and uh and they could hold a a bear with one hand and align him with the other one and and and and eat him alive right that's probably not true right they were probably very slim very fragile people who were to survive in and didn't have the strength to

overtake a lion or a bird or a bear right but uh yeah they were H gatherers they would could hand whenever they could but in the meantime hey they they had um um uh plant-based Bas diet and the diet in these people is uh somewhere between 65 and 70% in carbohydrates right which is about 34 33 30 to 35% higher than the US in carbohydrates and they have a about 15 25% protein and only about 10 14% fat so um this is this is the the the the the Paradox right of these populations who have

have um almost non-existent levels of obesity of type two diabetes of cardiovascular disease and uh yet they have very high um um um uh concentration of carbohydrates in their diets yeah sort of puts to rest this idea that carbohydrates or glucose are inherently bad for metabolic Health that must be something that you as someone who is so close with the research in this area and conducting your own stuff is you must shake your head when you come across those sort of claims yeah and and I I always go back to to the same thing this

is like a yeah if if you don't have good function in mitochondria and if you have carbohydrates that's bad that's that's that's as I said earlier that's adding gas to the fire that's going to make your condition worse because you need to metabolize it and and therefore yes for for someone with a PO mandal function maybe a a more protein uh based diet and carbohydrate reducing it it's is needed um right but if you are a healthy individual you're you exercise you're good you know like this these populations that I described right they they they

do in one day what is the recommended for uh in our civilization for one week which by the way very few individuals get to meet the 150 minutes required per week right so these people I would love at some point to travel to these areas and do a muscle bi iy of these populations in see Manic and function because I'm very sure it's going to resemble a lot to to those that we see in in in uh in in in you know very fit individuals who exercise a lot and they have the same eating habits

right uh eating a high carbohydrate diet low fat and moderating protein [Music]