Zone 2 Pioneer Dr. Iñigo San Millán: The Science of Mitochondria, Aging & Metabolic Health | #167

**Dr. Iñigo San Millán** (0:00)
Why the largest organ in the body does not see cancers? Because it's extremely well protected, and therefore maintaining muscle health is absolutely critical.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:09)
Dr. Iñigo San Millán is a leading researcher in cellular metabolism, mitochondrial function, exercise physiology, coached to world-class athletes.

**Dr. Iñigo San Millán** (0:20)
When we burn carbohydrates, the mandatory byproduct is lactate. If we didn't produce lactate, the muscles would not be able to function. Lactate becomes a fuel, and it is the preferred fuel for more cells.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:32)
Sometimes people are so metabolically dysfunctional that they are above zone 2 sitting in a chair. Our goal is to be in zone 2 when we're doing a lot of exercise because our mitochondria have been trained to be so efficient. The United States is 70% non-active people. Sitting in a chair sometimes produces more lactate in the blood than allows us to be metabolically healthy, right?

**Dr. Iñigo San Millán** (0:55)
And this is exactly what we see. Skeletal muscle is thought to be a system. It holds the truth to longevity, to disease. It's never, never, ever too late to exercise and to reverse the conditions. I've seen it so many times.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (1:13)
I am so thrilled that you're here and I want to thank you as my audience for being smart and curious and generous and sharing The Dr Vonda Podcast with all your friends. You know, this podcast has been around for a long time, but you have pushed it into consistently being in the top five, six, seven in all medicine podcasts across the world and in the top 100 of all health and wellness podcasts. That is a huge deal because you are helping not only yourself, but other men and women around the globe understand their health. So I'm thankful.
I want you to keep sharing. I want you to subscribe. The more you subscribe and support this podcast, the better we will be able to bring you the information that's transforming your lives. So I just want to thank you. I am really, really, really excited today on this show to bring you one of the pivotal scientists that influences my work. So my office by design is in a place called Lake Nona Performance Club, where I wanted all the, I hate to use the word gadgets, all the science, all the availability for my patients and the clients who fly in to see me wanting to recompose their bodies and really take a musculoskeletal approach to menopause and midlife.
In my building, Dr. Iñigo San Millán, who is a leading researcher in cellular metabolism, mitochondrial function, exercise physiology, coach to world-class athletes, has a lab. And he trained our staff using his methods for measuring the lactate threshold, describing what zone 2 training is and the polarization of training between zone 2 and full out sprint intervals. And so I thought, why not go back to the source today and really explore the science, how it should be applied to midlife people, both men and women, and just pick his brain a little bit. So thank you for joining me from Spain today. I'm so thrilled to have you.

**Dr. Iñigo San Millán** (3:30)
Thank you very much, Wanda. It's my pleasure. Thank you very much for the invitation.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (3:34)
Absolutely. You know, using your work, and every time we put someone on either the bike or the treadmill and hook them up to the metabolic card and prick their finger for their lactate threshold, the data then are presented according to your protocol, and there's a whole education packet that goes with it, explaining what a mitochondria is, what the lactate threshold is. And so for an audience who might be used to my explanations or not used to it at all, what are we trying to achieve in that laboratory as we're making them work progressively harder and measuring the lactate that's circulating in their blood?

**Dr. Iñigo San Millán** (4:16)
The methodology, it has its similarity to what you get when you're doing a stress test, right? A cardiac stress test, right? So we know that when you lay down and you get like a resting EKG or ECG, their reliability of that test is about 50%, right? We know that that's what you need to stress the heart, so that the heart starts showing how good it works or if it has any malfunction, right? So that's the whole thing of a stress test, right? When it comes to stressing mitochondria and metabolic function, it is the same thing, right? At rest, we don't have any non-invasive test that is going to tell your mitochondrial status, right?