The Precision Longevity Series Part 3

**Vonda Wright** (0:02)
Hi, I'm Dr. Vonda Wright, and this is HOT For Your Health.
Join us for conversations on the bleeding edge of science, health, and culture, as we bring you tech innovators, thought leaders, and the movers and shakers who are transforming science fiction into your new health reality.
Hi, everybody, I'm Dr. Bonda Wright, and I'm so excited that you're back at HOT For Your Health, where we talk about bleeding edge conversations on health science and culture. And today, I'm really excited to bring a colleague who actually works in the same building, the Lake Nona Performance Club that I do. And we collaborate together all the time. I have to tell you that I have learned so much from Dr. Tristan Starling-Smith, who is a PhD prepared exercise physiologist and certified strength and conditioning coach. He has clarified so much for me in terms of metabolism and how to train and really make a dent in body composition changing. I mean, I've really learned so much from you, Tristan. And some of the data that you've shared with myself and those participants in the Precision Longevity Program that we run here, it's really changed lives and it's really refocused how we spend our metabolic energy. So I'm really excited for people to get to listen to us today.

**Tristan Starling-Smith** (1:45)
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for having me.

**Vonda Wright** (1:48)
If you could see him now, this is an audio podcast, but if you could see him now, you are surrounded by equipment. There's a body composition, there's the DARI motion testing, which we're not gonna talk about today, but something really fascinating that I did right when I came to the Lake Nona Performance Club is I went through your lactate threshold testing.
And from that, you designed a four month program for me using zone training and really taught me what zone two training is and how to get my little bitty mitochondria, which you can explain to everybody what that is, to burn fat.

**Tristan Starling-Smith** (2:25)
Yes.

**Vonda Wright** (2:26)
Right, instead of simple carbs. So let's dive in to what is metabolic testing? What is lactate threshold testing and how do you use it?

**Tristan Starling-Smith** (2:34)
Absolutely. So metabolic testing. There's a few different ways to do metabolic testing. There's resting metabolic tests and then there's active tests. The lactate test that we went through a few months ago is a way for us to see how the metabolism feels during exercise. So how the testing works is you start off really, really slow.
So at like a walking pace and you progress across time. So every few minutes, the intensity gets a little bit harder. And also every few minutes, we measure lactate via finger stick. So just a single prick of the finger and one drop of blood is all we need. And based upon those lactate measurements, we can estimate very accurately fat burning and carbohydrate burning at each heart rate that you are experiencing at those intensities. So as we increase through the intensity thresholds, we're able to effectively map the entire metabolism. And those are called your zones.
So the human body is capable of being in, let's break it down to a simple six zones. There's many different sub breakdowns of those zones, but six zones starting from one all the way through six.
At one, you're burning a little bit of fat, but at a low rate.
As you progress up to zone two, this is where you'll hit something called your fat max. This is where you're burning the most amount of fat per minute your body is capable of.
You move into zone three. This is a transitionary zone. This was the body is burning a little bit of fat, starts dipping into your carbohydrates as well. Then you hit your lactate threshold two, or what some people call just your lactate threshold. And that's where zone four begins. This is where the body is predominantly fully in a carbohydrate metabolism now.
That progresses into zone five, which is near your VO2 max. Much higher rate of carbohydrate metabolism in zone six is extremely anaerobic. You only have a limited amount of time, very limited amount of time, maybe 15 seconds there. And that is the purpose of the metabolic testing.

**Vonda Wright** (4:39)
So the way you use this to help me was, I proudly proclaim that I get bored on a treadmill and I like to just grind it out fast, right? I'd rather spin out on the fastest I can go. And I was never really doing it right. And I can, even at my age, I can get my heart rate up to 186 and maintain it there.