VO₂ Max
Summary of VO₂ Max
Primary Information, Benefits, Effects, and Important Facts
VO2 stands for ventillary oxygen and represents the amount of oxygen you’re inhaling.
VO2 max represents the maximal rate at which you can use oxygen during exercise.
Three things to remember:
VO2 max is a common parameter of cardiorespiratory fitness because, as you become fitter, you become better at using oxygen to produce energy (your VO2 max increases).
Moreover, exercise intensity is often reported as a percentage of VO2 max based on the assumption that more intense exercise requires that you consume more oxygen to fuel your mitochondria (the power generators in your cells).
Nevertheless, higher VO2 max doesn’t always translate as better sports performance, because sports often involve moments when energy requirements are so great (the intensity is so high) that oxygen isn’t used to generate the required energy.
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Human Effect Matrix
The Human Effect Matrix looks at human studies (it excludes animal and in vitro studies) to tell you what supplements affect vo₂ max.
| Grade | Level of Evidence [show legend] |
|---|---|
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Robust research conducted with repeated double-blind clinical trials |
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Multiple studies where at least two are double-blind and placebo controlled |
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Single double-blind study or multiple cohort studies |
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Uncontrolled or observational studies only |
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Level of Evidence
?
The amount of high quality evidence. The more
evidence, the more we can trust the results.
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Supplement |
Magnitude of effect
?
The direction and size of the supplement's impact on
each outcome. Some supplements can have an increasing effect, others have a decreasing effect, and others have no effect.
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Consistency of research results
?
Scientific research does not always agree. HIGH or
VERY HIGH means that most of the scientific research agrees.
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Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Minor
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Low See all 6 studies |
Improvements in VO2 max are not wholly reliable, and appear to be low in magnitude.
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- | Moderate See all 5 studies |
Effects on VO2 max are highly unreliable and not currently thought significant.
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- | Very High See all 6 studies |
All studies assessing the effects of colostrum in athletes subject to cardiovascular training have failed to find any difference between colostrum and whey protein (control) for influencing VO2 max.
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