YouSaid · the spoken record

Sami Inkinen

lines on the record: 127
first: 2026-05-20
most recent: 2026-05-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, thank you so much. And honestly, I appreciate those kind words. It's 11 years in the making. And never take it for granted. Bigger company, bigger problems, but trying hard every day.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And aside benefit is we also save lives. And I say that because the law of language of American capitalism is dollars. And so when you can help someone else to make money, you're going to be very, very successful. And I love it.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, thank you. That's so nice. Anyone who pays healthcare costs in America could be and should be a customer. If you pay healthcare costs, you are paying for the party or people staying sick and others profiting from the sickness. So this includes self-insured employers, and we work with like 800 of them. So essentially all 14,000 employers, self-insure and thousands others. So all self-insured employers obviously health insurance companies when they take risk on their patients. And this includes the private Medicare advantage, private Medicaid managed Medicaid organizations, state employee groups. I think we work with 13 out of 50 states today already. So state employee groups and then some government entities. There's VA, there's DOD and others. So anyone who pays, any payer who pays healthcare costs could be our customer and our pitch to them is, guess what? We'll help you make money. Yes, indeed. We'll help you make money.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Diabetes to me mostly completely unnecessary for the last three, four decades, that that disease, among with other metabolic health conditions, is fundamentally reversible. And you don't hear that from your doctor today, sadly. And it's not doctors for their well-meaning, but you go to medical school. You get literally 0, 0.5 hours of nutrition training. And nobody tells that conditions like type 2 diabetes can be reversed, like systematically, not miraculously. And so hopefully I can be a messenger of hope that these conditions are reversible, especially after I already disclosed that I used to live thinking it's your fault, it's your fault. You're just lazy. You don't have willpower, but that's not true. Nobody gets these things because they're lazy or they decide. It's because of our food environment. And the food environment kind of slowly but surely poisons.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you cover things very, very well. I would say my professional duty is to be an evangelizer and say this very sad metabolic health mess that we find ourselves in America and globally and this savvy the common sense thing that oh the diseases that we talked about type 2 diabetes obesity cardiovascular is there chronic and progressive and the best we can do is to manage them with an ever increasing load of medications is fundamentally not true and whether that's furred out something else i just want to be very clear that this hope in the horizon and the hope is largely in the form of nutrition but not in a traditional way that you need to restrict and suffer so that's sort of my professional duty to bring hope and say if you're living with type 2 diabetes and by the way people are living with type 2 diabetes usually their family members their relatives and you've seen people lose eyes and limbs and alives because of type 2 diabetes”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Also, if you're ever contemplating having a family, that book also gives humility as you think about how much can it affect your kids' life. And I'm not going to give a spoiler, Alan. Highly recommend.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In our family, I read a lot, but there's one person who reads more, that's my wife. So I'd say half of my book recommendations come from Herakosi Screens, 10 books for everyone that I read, so it's a good filter. And I tried several times. I laughed several times, and I was incredibly inspired and came out reading that book, Belief in Humanity. And just it was amazing.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, the high growth handbook by Elon Gilwitz is much, much, much new. And I know you've entered Elon. Was that in a professional setting? I do read a lot. If you want to blog for a book that I really, really enjoyed over the last year, very inspiring shows what's possible in life and a little bit of leaves you wondering like what's really true in a universe and what not you said by Danny Trejo”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Score will take care of itself. High output management. What was the first one? The score will take care of itself before the Ninos Coaches Walsh's book and high output management.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am not a big book gifter other than recommend forma like Verda team and sadly they are like professionally and they are all two kind of well known uncommon that they would add a lot of value there's the”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unless I have to think about money, happy I am. It's just focus on a life and that life's happening. Forget the money. Life's happening. Go and make it happen.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no spoiler on the back. So there's that. My approach to money is very, very simple. The less I have to think about, the happier I am. And the fact that earlier success have enough for house and food and leftovers is wonderful. But if I have to be thinking about the leftovers at all, something's wrong. So the simplicity is very, very. Buying time is very helpful. There's some things that just, it's good to have kind of service and helpers around. I would say that's good investment. And then the one and only thing where I would say, yeah, I do like sort of living environment to have a house that you can enjoy not for the sake of it, but to have the kind of little things and conveniences you have, whether that's to be able to exercise or roll into a lake. So I would say that, but.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's kind of what I think mainly coming from that sort of simplicity and convenience focus on the things that matter. Sure, I have fancy bicycles to ride fast, but no cars.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Car from San Francisco Airport for eight years. Why that? So it's a funny story, but illustrates my point. Well, first of all, I didn't have any credit in America and I needed a car after I came out of Stanford. So for work reasons, I go to Thrifty and rent it. This was like 19 bucks a day. No credit. I could rent it. And then I realized this is amazing because I travel so much for work. I don't need to watch the car. I don't need to change the oils. It got broken into twice in San Francisco. I could just drive the 19 bucks a day car to airport and drive out with a new car. I was like, this is so convenient. No worries. Ford escape. That was my car of choice. And then one week and I came home years, years later, and my wife's like, this is it. You need to own a car. You're an adult. You can't be renting all the time. And she bought me the same Fortescape that I had been renting for like seven years. So that was it.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe the start is, I think I mentioned earlier that I find people say sacrifice, or you have to say no to so many things. I actually find saying no and focusing on the essential incredibly liberating. And it's kind of my happy place. And so for some of these crap around and too much choice, what colored t-shirt or what kind of clothes do I put on? I love the fact that things are as simple as they are. And sure life is way more complicated now than, say, 15 years ago. But I actually like not to clutter my life with money or anything else. Let's put it that way. And keep things very simple. And I'll briefly give the example of the car story. So yes, I've had my driver license ever since it was possible in Finland. It was 18. So 18. But I actually, I didn't buy my first car. My wife bought it. Maybe I was 36 forced because I had been renting thrifty.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The subjective experience oftentimes the biggest decisions in life are based on that. Like, who do you marry? By the way, I had a spreadsheet for that too, but then I realized met my wife, I threw the spreadsheet out the window. And that was it. Same thing about having children. Like the truly meaningful decisions, they are ultimately subjective in nature. And when you're truly... How does it land? How does it feel that the answer kind of comes there? And I feel in the middle of the roadboard, no email, no nothing, no job, no test, no to-dos, all just space. It was much easier to be in touch with that kind of experience and feeling. That's the story I tell, but may or may not be true.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My guess is it was the clarity of thought when there were no destructions, like the clarity of thought. And I think there's even a theory of the brain or the mind is kind of Bayesian. Like you have priors, you have so many priors and you're always stuck in your rigid thinking. And obviously there's science that you can kind of loosen those priors with psychedelics and other things. And then you kind of see things clearly. I honestly think that there was the ability to think cleanly and clearly. And that's kind of what contributed to it. And what I found in life is ultimately the human experience is 100% subjective. Outside of that, you know, it's just computers, right? And algorithms. But it's 100% subjective. And when you really tune into...”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is it. It's going to happen. And my wife happens to be even more decisive than I am. So we had an iridium satellite phone. This is time way before Starlink, which works, but you can send like a text message bailey and see texted to her girlfriend, who obviously wasn't drawing and said, hey, can you, I'm going to give you some data. Can you start tracking my evaluation cycles so you can tell us text is back when is the exact timing? And we should have tried on a both. And I will say that was the least dramatic moment for both of us. And the fun part of this story is there's a little bit of a mystery about. We got off the boat just about 10 years and nine months ago now and my oldest daughter is 10 years old. So there's a little bit of a mystery. What happened? A word happened, but it's very close.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What is there to do? You know, I could start five more companies and I don't know, put my name on the side of a hospital, which I don't want. What's the meaning? Essentially, it's the existential crisis. Like, what can a human do? What's worthy of the life? And obviously there's a number of things, but the lightning that hit me was, wow. Can you imagine raising a child? That's incredible. And I turned to my wife and said, listen, this is kind of weird because we've talked about this and we don't want, but I just feel we should start a family. And her immediate response was, well, I've been thinking about exactly the same for the last 24 hours, exactly the same last 24 hours. And then and there, it was...”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, so I think we were about seven or ten days into the trip. It was very, very stormy early. And I had had enough kind of white space to ruminate about life. And it was like a lightning strike. I still cannot explain this feeling of like, you know, I was in my 30s.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the immediate response, I remember it vividly sadly. It was, I can't believe. That's the last one I would. And I had to explain myself out of it. But yeah, it was a life transforming trip during which I made several big life decisions, one of which we made together, which was to start a family, which also is a complicated, obviously big decision to have kids. And entering the boat, we were both convinced that life's too good to destroy it with children. And we literally changed our minds within the hour at the same time independently, which is quite something.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A diligent engineer. I stepped into that trap and answered it going through friend by friend, landing on the very specific one. But anyways, that is a question no married or unmarried person should ever answer, but I”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of it was we had to fill the airwaves and we had all kinds of questions to each other. And one of the questions my wife had to me was. Think we were running out of questions. They said, listen, of all our friends, if it wasn't me, who would you marry?”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because we had to make a lot of decisions around safety and navigation, do we go this angle or that? Lots of decisions every day. Like, what do we do today? And you would never know if that was the right decision because the weather changes. And it's one thing to do that at home and then you go to work and you forget it, but you're basically stuck in a small stinky box for 45 days. This unlimited opportunity is to get back to it and kind of bigger about it. That was incredibly helpful and served us very well. The one thing I will say, and then you can ask other questions, we had a lot of time, obviously, 45 days, three hours. We settled our six, seven hours a day. So there's 18 hours a day to talk, listen, be together, can't escape, can't go to the bathroom, can lock the door, go to the bedroom. You cannot. And so some of it was silent.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The document, it served two purposes, one in a kind of preparation phase, I may be mistakenly wanted to make sure that my wife is 100% in. I was like, this is what it's going to take. This isn't show up in two weeks and start rowing. It's going to be a halftime job for six months to even get physically ready and kind of train and know how to jump into survival suit. It's a halftime job. So part of it, the document was like, I'm signing into this. I'm not going to give up, which sounds like husband is asking wife to do that. But yes, that's me. And then the other half was about behaviors on the boat. The most important piece of the document that served us very, very well is the following. Any and every decision once it's made is water under the bridge.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You survive it both and come out together, and I will say this we had been married for four years, we had known each other for six years, having gone through that experience and hopping off the boat on a platform on Waikiki Beach and hugging my wife, that still is the sweetest moment in my life and hugging her and knowing there's only one person on this planet who knows exactly what we went through. And it's my freaking wife. The fact that we got it through, we got it through together, no amount of hardship is going to break this, including having kids. But anyways, so it certainly was life.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For listeners, just the context is indeed it's 2400 nautical miles from Monterey, California to Hawaii, Waikiki Beach, the shortest distance, but weather wasn't really our friend. So we ended up doing 2,750 nautical miles. And I think it was 45 days and three hours, but who's counting? So essentially a month and a half, almost seven weeks of rowing with my wife and completely unsupported. I just want to be clear. No helicopters, no follow-up boats. They weren't submarines around us and helicopters dropping bon bombs. So it was just two of us. First of all, there's so many life lessons. And if you team are fortunate to find a woman of your life, that's definitely a way to test the relationship's longevity.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Personally, a huge believer in that as long as you sort of fuel the work while you do it, you don't have to gain because glycogen stores three grams of water. So if you have 600 grams, let's just say 600 grams of carbs glycogen in your body. So that's 2,400 calories. You have another 1,800 grams of water. So it's 2.4 kilos. So that's five or six pounds. Feel like fully loaded. I haven't found even for very long distance. You don't need to gain five or six pounds. If you drip feed and fuel the actual work, you get the same results. Controversial statement, but that's my experience.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“10 15 minutes off of that, but 824 is pretty fast. I run a 256 marathon off the bike. I think it was, yeah, 256, 2 hours 56 minutes after swim on a bike. It's reasonably fast. But my longest run to be able to run a marathon in a triadlon was usually one hour, 20 minutes, which is like, I don't know, nine or ten miles. So just as an example, that would be the second thing that I don't think you need specificity in that sense. If you need to build a cardiovascular engine, do it in a way that doesn't beat your body down. So like cycling versus running. So I think that would be one thing. And then let's leave the nutrition aside, but that's like a war. Like how much should you eat carbs versus this? And should you do carb loading and all that? Needless to say, I...”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, training in a way where you procressive overlord, you hit your body, but then in sort of three to four days, you are back better, faster, stronger than ever. And then you keep repeating that. Personally, I found that, at least for myself way safer, way more objective. And I always knew, oh, I'm getting stronger. Oh, I'm getting more tired. All right, I'm going to take two days off or maybe I have a full rest week. So I would say that's one thing. The second thing, again, I'm not a running coach, a running expert per se, but especially if you have a multi-sport approach, it's way better to train a cardiovascular engine on a low impact machine. So cycling. So if you're like doing triathlon, I've done more than 10 full distance environments and fastest was eight hours, 24 minutes, which is pretty fast for an amateur, especially before the aerodynamic games that people now have on bikes. So maybe I could take”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Avoided any kind of overtraining. And I think when you're lifting weights at the gym, this concept is very easier to craft. It's like, let's say do your bench press. And for three weeks, your reps or weight just keeps going down. Everybody would be like, what the F? Like clearly I'm not either eating enough or I'm lifting too often. But Andran's athletes do exactly that. They kind of keep grinding, grinding, grinding, they get more tired, then they hope they get out of the hole. So that would be one thing that”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then you taper for two or three weeks and you hope that after your last crazy week, in two or three weeks, you dig yourself out of the hole and then you're super fast on a race day. It's like literally you're on a knife sitch all the time. And I completely changed that in the last four or five years. I was really competing in Triathon, which is I want to be ready to raise almost at the end of every week, meaning progressive overload, but stay vibrant. And no matter how hard of a workout I do say on a Saturday or Sunday, by Wednesday, I have to be ready. Hit hard and feel like I can do almost like my best numbers. Personally, I found that more effective”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, how do I hack this? In that approach, I basically wanted to slice and dice running performance, or at least the minimum fancy silicon valley term, first principles, but like into its contributing parts, like what are the one or two, three things you need to have. One, muscular endurance. Like you can be cardiovascular fit, but go and run a downhill for 30 minutes or even 10 minutes. Like your legs are noodles. You can't continue running. So you need minimum dose for muscular endurance so that your legs don't fall apart. And I think I was running for like a travel and that had a half marathon, so 13 miles, 13 by 1 miles to run. So muscular endurance was one. Then there was the efficiency you mentioned and so forth. But anyways, to go back to the actual broader question, a couple of things for me. One, especially for endurance sports, one is triadlin and for like a marathon running and other things. One is like you massive load and volume and you kind of get more”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, that particular like, oh my God, I need to get fast in running came. I wanted to do a trial, and this is already a couple of years, actually just about 10 years ago. Wanted to do a triad loan and I was training to row across the Pacific Ocean with my wife in a robot, which is a whole other conversation we're going to have. And I had stopped kind of running and I was lifting weights, doing a lot of front squats. I was weighing 200 pounds. And like right now, I'm kind of in a cycling scene. So my weight is like 177 pounds. I was 23 pounds heavier.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm using dangerous terms here because who knows what the optimal doses is, but constantly pushing the VO to max. I think it's just the injury risk. It burns you out and it's not going to do anything because once you reach your VO to max ceiling, you kind of are there.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Typical ways to specifically get your VO2 max up, but they can burn you out if you do too many of those. And so for me personally, what I do typically closer to like a specific event or race, it may be like three weeks what I do two of them a week. So just like six workouts. And then I drop it to, I don't know, one every two weeks or something. You can burn out. The VO2 max isn't just not going to infinitely keep going up. bad news. And so maybe that's how I think about finer sport where you can comfortably and enjoyably do an hour or so of cardio, whatever that is. And then this would be my advice. Thanks strategically when you do your like a VO2 block. And that could be just three weeks or maybe it's two weeks every quarter or something like that. And then the maintenance dose again.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then to the sort of VO2 max, so building a better Aerobic engine in like Zone 2 does help your VO2 max too. And then, of course, if you lower your body fat, body weight, the kind of denominator in the calculation improves. But specifically VO2 max training, you actually get the adaptation pretty quickly. So like I don't do it all the time, crazy amount because it can also burn you out. The two most common ways to really hit VO2 max is either you do sort of 30 seconds on offs for like you go very hard and then 30 seconds easy. But then essentially you kind of keep hitting the VO to max oxygen consumption or sort of two deformity sold out. They're very, very hard or two to three minutes all out and then you take three minutes off and you do that, whatever, four or five times. So those are the most effective, I would say.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then if you live in a mountain, it's very, very easy to get sort of zone one, zone two by just walking, even without actual weight, because you go up, up and sort of speed walk. And then maybe the last one I say, if you have the self-confidence to not feel too embarrassed, is Nordic walking. So Nordic skiers to summertime, you either walk or run with them, but you basically have poles and you go uphill. You'll probably get an extra 10 beats, heartbeat, and kind of a higher level exercise.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then, of course, often people who kind of totally destroyed their niece and hit swimming, which I hate swimming personally as a traveler, well, elements of it are beautifully go underwater. It's kind of like meditation, but more than 20 minutes. And it's like, please give me a break.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There you go. So one is bike fit. If there's someone who's like a PT and a bike fitter and say, hey, I have these XYZ issues. Fit this bike to specifically work for me as much as I hate it. So that's why. Kind of, I don't know, do like three minute standing, three minute seated, three minute standing, whatever. So that would be sort of one thing to consider for the bike that you get a fit that's specifically for your back issues. It may not be the world's most aerodynamic, but if it's stationary bike, who cares? So that's one. The other thing, you don't have a lot of snow around, but I know you occasionally go to places with snow. Nordic skiing and sort of skimming obviously fantastic. Fantastic”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Walking or hiking or running, you are going to get better. Initially, when you've done nothing, come off the couch. It's like very easy progressive overload. It's like do anything and you get better. And then the other one is just to sort of specificity, like if you want to be a sprinter, you can't train like a marathon runner and vice versa. And if you want to squad a lot, bench press isn't going to help a lot. So it's literally those principles that I use. But to give specific advice to you, what you just said, to get the cardiovascular stimuli, you obviously have to get your muscles burning oxygen using oxygen and then burning either carbs and your heart rate up. So you need to do something for that. The reason cycling or any kind of a bike thing is so widely used it doesn't take space. And if it's indoors, it's very safe and it's low impact, it's all impact.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Essentially, 95% of my life, I self-coached myself because I take it as an interesting puzzle to try to learn and then surprise, surprise as an entrepreneur. I don't really want to be told what to do. Ended up self-coaching. So based on that experience and with that caveat, first of all, on a high level, my approach basically in everything in business, metabolic health, training is kind of nail the basics, less marginal gains than crazy. And I know it's boring and doesn't sell a lot of supplements and stuff, but it's like nail the basics, less marginal gains and crazy. And when you do that, you get sort of, that's when you actually get the 99% of the results. And for training specifically, also whatever you want to accomplish, and you've done a lot of sports and lifting, it's the very basics are very simple. It's procrastinative overload and specificity. Like procressive overload and specificity. If you don't have procressive overload, even if it's a”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Asking the non coach a coaching question. My favorite topic pretending to be an expert, I will take it. I will take it. Yeah. So my approach to, I've had a coach and then I...”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe you're 35 or 40 or 45. My measure is more than 80 milliliters. So it's pretty high. Very high. The caveat is it was measured like a couple of years ago. It's probably a little bit lower today. The max VO2 max tends to go a little bit down as you age. You can still kind of increase the percentage of that that you can produce for 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 minutes. But yeah, it's. Of very, very high. I think the highest ever measured recently, it's more than 100. But if you're 90, you're kind of Olympic. 85 to 90 gets you to Olympic podium in endurance sports. And again, that's not the one and only measure. There's a lot of other things. But if you're above 90, you should not be doing podcasts. You should be in the Olympics.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do kids tell me who I like to know something. But I think at this age in particular, or even like a 30 year old fit male, so VO2 max is measured relative to body weight. So it's how much oxygen you can consume. Your body can utilize. So it's milliliters per kilo per minute. I think it's maybe 40.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More sustainable and easier everything is, including just life. And that's what we teach to our patients. And you can kind of be anywhere in the dose response curve and be successful. The further you are, we can pretty much predict not just your health outcomes here out, but even the healthcare cost savings, which is sort of insane because drug companies do these trials. You take one pill, this is what happens, take two pills, this, and then you kind of want to optimize where you want to be on a curve. Our therapy is no different. We show this to pay. We educate. We said it's your choice and you get here. And the beauty is that we empower people so they can make their choice. And then the beauty also is that you don't have to be perfect and you can still be very, very successful. Average diet is so bad, honestly, that it's relatively easy to make your own progress.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's why we don't really use the keto label because, again, for two main reasons. One, you Google it and you get your version that you can eat a love or hate and likely it's wrong. And then two is it's all on a spectrum or kind of a dose response curve and we never want to let sort of perfection be the enemy of progress. And the less you have hunger and cravings and the better you feel.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We guide the patient towards sort of leafier, lists, starchy, vegetable options. So you can eat very sumptuous vegan food, and I think we even, because this was a misconception in our very early days. So we've been pretty vocal. We have a bunch of patients who are vegan. If somebody Googles Verda Health on vegan diet or something, there's a couple of our patients have sort of openly shared what they eat, but it's totally manageable. In fact, you just kind of end up throwing out the window the crap vegan food. So I don't know, sugar, frosted conflicts would be a perfect example of that. Orange juice or something like that, which I love oranges, but orange juice is essentially soda.”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Expensive because corn is subsidized. Hence, you can have unlimited amount of corn calories cost nothing. Well, guess what? You can buy 9,000 calories, so one liter of high quality olive oil from Kascov or like a, what is it, cost, two bucks. So it's a misconception. So the cheap subsidized sugar calories Can actually be replaced at the same cost. Now, if you're very, very overweight, you don't want to be replacing those calories because guess what? You want your body to give the fat calories. And then around the kind of healthy vegan food, then”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of 100 grams of protein a day is sort of minimum you have to so that's probably the hardest and vegans know this very well it's you have to look at like nuts and tofu and many need to rely on soy and are you willing to eat eggs that would be one so we figure out again with the patient like okay what are you willing to eat are you able to have dairy you know some people are okay some not but that's probably the hardest user to make sure that people get adequate protein And protein is really essentially it's the only maxim that doesn't really store itself. So you kind of have to get it a couple of times two to three times a day to maintain your body mass. Then after that, it's actually interesting to get the sufficient calories if there's a lot of crap vegan food meaning sugar or, you know, cornflakes or whatever, then we start replacing those with healthy fats. And this is also a misconception. Like, oh, it must not be...”
2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT