#490 How to Get Fitter As You Age - Dr Elie Abirached

Elie Abirached (0:00)

We know for a fact that if you are in a lower 25 percentile of VO2 max, you are twice as likely to be ill, twice the amount that that blows my mind. More is never more, balance is more.

Siim Land (0:18)

Dr. Eli, welcome to the show.

Elie Abirached (0:21)

Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

Siim Land (0:23)

Yeah, we met a few weeks ago at this conference, and where we both spoke at. And one of my acquaintances or friends, he introduced me to you as someone who had a VO2 max of 70 in their 50s, which is a very phenomenal result. So I was of course very interested to know who you are and how did you achieve such a feat of fitness. So yeah, I'm happy to speak with you today.

Elie Abirached (0:56)

Thank you so much. Thank you. I've always admired what you do and how you do it. It's incredible. I think you are the number one youngest biologically, isn't it? Like in the world right now? In the Olympics?

Siim Land (1:11)

Well, I mean, it depends on... I don't think so. I'm sure there's many people with a lower score and this validity of these tests can be debated about.

Elie Abirached (1:21)

But it's still super impressive, Siim. Please don't be so humble. It's still super impressive.

Siim Land (1:28)

Right. Well, thank you. But yeah, I mean, in the podcast, I wanted to talk about what you do. You have a center in Dubai. You do a lot of coaching. You are also obviously walking to talk. So yeah, I think we'll have a very interesting discussion. So I wanted to start off with, how did you get into this health optimization and just longevity and wellness?

Elie Abirached (1:55)

Yeah, of course. So, you know, I don't know what your journey is like, but with me, at some point, I think for most people that I've discussed this with or discussed their own wellness journey, there's always like a pivotal event that gets you into this path. For me, as I was going through it and I began introspection and working on my kind of trauma release and things like that, I realized it started earlier than I thought it did. So I grew up in Beirut, Lebanon as a teenager, and the time was very, very tumultuous. There was so much happening. And I'm an only boy. And they were basically picking up anyone who was able to kind of be on the street or fight or whatever. And obviously, you know, I was trying to very desperately to avoid that. So I launched into physical fitness. So I began calisthenics at maybe the age of 14 And I really focused on it. And later on in life, fast forward, you know, a couple of decades, when I started working on myself a little more seriously, I realized that this was my protective mechanism that put me on a path ironically of wellness for all my life. So what started as a point of adversity and self-protection turned out to be a lifelong journey of the pursuit of well-being. And then obviously, my life is punctuated with these events, you know, either family members are sick with cancer or, you know, heart problems or whatever, all of this different stuff around you. And then they kind of, this acts as like another launch pad for you to kind of delve deeper, do more, understand better and so on. And then I opened my first corporate wellness business in 2006, 2005 in Dubai, which then became a lot more focused on that side. And granted earlier than what most people were doing, but only because I didn't think of it as a business. I thought of it as a lifestyle, as everyone is doing it, be it at work, at home or at school or wherever you are. So, and hence where the journey kind of officially began. And then I launched into mountaineering, marathons, anything that could basically get my hands on. And then down the line, I eventually did more than 50 marathons, climbed quite a few mountains around the world, did quite a few treks, all sorts of stuff that kind of put your body into the test, to say the least. And therefore, this took me in another rabbit hole where I wanted to understand how can I keep my body optimized? And that's really what I do right now. So yeah, the center that you mentioned is called Restore. And we focus on one of the main pillars of my journey and the program and my talks and everything that I do, which is recovery. It's the most understated pillar in everything that we do, and it's where adaptation and strength actually happens. I hope you agree with that. And then obviously, I run a program called Limitless Human. And with that, I integrate pillars together, including recovery and several others, a lot of the things that you yourself talk about and sort of work around.