If you are a competitive endurance athlete over the age of 65, you are likely living through a frustrating biological mystery. You still have the drive. You are still putting in the long miles on your bike or hitting the trail for your morning run. But despite your hard work, your body seems to be changing in ways that don't feel fair.
For a long time, most people believed that the only way to help their heart was to do "cardio." We were told to go for walks, run on treadmills, or ride bikes. These are great habits, but they are only part of the story. Think of your body like a car. Doing aerobic exercise (cardio) is like washing the car and keeping the paint shiny. It looks good and helps the car last, but if you never open the hood to check the engine, the car won't run forever.
What Peter Megdal’s World Hour Record Reveals About Aging, Fitness, and Cardiovascular Recovery
For decades, human athletic performance was assumed to follow a largely linear decline beginning in early adulthood. Conventional physiological models predicted that the cardiovascular system, pulmonary capacity, and skeletal muscle function would steadily deteriorate as cellular senescence accumulated.
If you’re an endurance athlete, you’ve probably had this moment: your fitness is undeniable—resting heart rate is low, VO₂ is high, your training log looks like a work of art—and then a blood test shows LDL (“bad cholesterol”) is higher than expected.
That can feel unfair. It can also trigger a very specific fear:
“If I take a statin, will I lose performance?”
It's the prestige metric on every fitness watch and a key benchmark for vitality.
But does a high VO₂ max actually make you live longer? Or is it just a sign that you're already doing the right things?
As a medical engineer (PhD) and lifelong athlete, I've studied the biology of performance for decades. The evidence is compelling, but it's also nuanced.
Let's unpack the science: Correlation vs. Causation.
What do people on social media mean by “ketosis,” and does it automatically mean “healthier”?
Ketosis simply means your blood ketones (often β-hydroxybutyrate, βHB) are elevated because carbohydrate availability is low (fasting, very-low-carb diets) or because you ingested ketones.
