A few words about Lactic Acid

Lactic acid has always had bad press. However, it seems that rather than be demonized lactic acid should be respected or perhaps more accurately the lactate that is rapidly produced from lactic acid.

In a published article "Biochemistry of Exercise-Induced Metabolic Acidosis," Professor Robert Robergs from the University of New Mexico makes a strong case that lactic acid has been hopelessly misunderstood. "If muscle did not produce lactate, acidosis and muscle fatigue would occur more quickly, and exercise performance would be severely impaired."

However, this information is not new; for ten years Professor George Brooks from UCLA in the USA has been promoting this perspective stating that lactic acid is a key substance used to provide energy, burn dietary carbohydrates, produce blood glucose and liver the so called lactate shuttle or lactate transport system, a mechanism where lactate moves around the body from muscle fibres to organs.

So how did this system become so misunderstood for so long? Two Nobel laureates, AV Hill and Otto Meyerhof, who won Nobel Prizes in 1922 for their studies of carbohydrate metabolism in working muscles. They noticed that lots of lactic acid was being produced at just the point where the muscles stopped functioning and concluded that lactic acid must be the cause of muscle fatigue. However, this turned out to be a classic mistake – a conclusion based on related events, but not a true cause-and-effect relationship. In addition, Hill and Meyerhof were working with frog muscles, and human muscles have a much higher endurance potential. Another fundamental flaw in the reported research was that the frog muscles were cut off from the rest of the frog, and isolated in a jar which prevented a fresh flow of oxygen to complete the metabolic process.