So, before the marketing machine gets into full swing and the lactate era dawns upon us, let\u2019s take a look at what lactate actually is, why it\u2019s misunderstood, and whether these new lactate gels might live up to the hype.<\/p>\n
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What Is Lactate?<\/p>\n
Lactate serves several critical roles:<\/p>\n
Rather than being the villain it was once made out to be, lactate is a link between glycolytic and aerobic energy production that allows your body to continue producing energy during intense exercise.<\/p>\n Why Does Lactate Have Such a Bad Reputation?<\/p>\n For decades, athletes were taught that lactate (or lactic acid) caused fatigue and the burning sensation during hard exercise. We now know that\u2019s not true.<\/p>\n Lactate appears whenever you\u2019re exercising intensely because it\u2019s produced alongside rapid ATP (energy) turnover, not because it\u2019s causing muscles to fail or fatigue. Lactate is more like a firefighter arriving at the scene of a fire than the person who started it. Remember, correlation isn\u2019t causation.<\/p>\n Where Does Lactate Come In? At low to moderate exercise intensities, the mitochondria (the powerhouse of your cells) can keep up with energy demand. Pyruvate (a molecule made as part of glycolysis or carbohydrate breakdown) enters the mitochondria, where it continues through aerobic metabolism to produce energy.<\/p>\n As exercise intensity rises, however, carbohydrate breakdown begins producing pyruvate faster than the mitochondria can process it. A traffic jam develops, while at the same time glycolysis rapidly converts an important molecule, NAD\u207a, into NADH, gradually reducing the supply of NAD\u207a needed to keep glycolysis running. Without enough NAD\u207a, glycolysis slows, limiting your ability to rapidly produce ATP during high-intensity exercise.<\/p>\n Rather than allowing glycolysis to slow or stop, the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) converts pyruvate into lactate:<\/p>\n Pyruvate + NADH + H\u207a \u2192 Lactate + NAD\u207a<\/p>\n This reaction regenerates NAD\u207a, allowing glycolysis to continue producing energy at a very high rate. In other words, lactate is at the center of a rapid recycling system that keeps energy production moving when demand is highest while also consuming some of the H\u207a that would otherwise make muscles more acidic and less able to produce force efficiently.<\/p>\n What Could Supplementing with Lactate Do? This idea isn\u2019t new; however, the engineering behind it may have changed dramatically. Researchers have investigated lactate supplementation before but ran into two major barriers:<\/p>\n Dosage<\/b><\/p>\n The dosage thought to have an impact on metabolism is roughly 10\u201325 g of lactate per hour. To deliver that amount, lactate must be bound to a salt like sodium or calcium, which would also require consuming a very large amount of those minerals. This isn\u2019t unlike the early challenges with ketone supplements, they tasted terrible, were expensive, and often caused GI issues.<\/p>\n Impact on the Gut<\/p>\n Lactate (apparently) doesn\u2019t taste good, but even if you could consume the required amount, your digestive system may have other thoughts. Early studies using sodium and calcium lactate reported plenty of gastrointestinal side effects, which is likely why products currently on the market contain milligrams, not grams, of the stuff.<\/p>\n From Lab to Field claims to have solved the challenges of older formulations, creating a gel that supposedly tastes good, costs about what a premium nutrition gel would cost, and delivers 40 g of carbohydrate plus 5 g of lactate in a 1:1 glucose-to-fructose ratio.<\/p>\n In theory, lactate supplementation could do a few things:<\/p>\n Complement carbohydrate intake<\/p>\n Lactate uses the MCT transporter rather than the SGLT1 or GLUT5 transporters that glucose and fructose use to get into the cell, so it wouldn\u2019t compete for absorption. Perhaps this also means athletes with a lower ability to absorb and oxidize carbohydrates could have another way to help close that gap in energy intake. Another thought is that because lactate is already several steps further along in carbohydrate metabolism, it\u2019s essentially \u201cpre-digested,\u201d meaning it could potentially be utilized more quickly and provide energy sooner.<\/p>\n Buffering\u00a0<\/p>\n Lactate acts as a buffer, taking up some H\u207a that would otherwise make the muscle more acidic. Supplementation could, in theory, help soak up some of that acid, thereby helping maintain acid-base balance in the muscle.<\/p>\n Spare glycogen<\/p>\n At lower exercise intensities, taking lactate gels may decrease reliance on carbohydrates and therefore spare some of your muscles\u2019 glycogen stores. Replenishing muscle glycogen during exercise is difficult, but perhaps lactate could provide another fuel source that allows your body to conserve some of those carbohydrate stores.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve used the words \u201cmay,\u201d \u201ccould,\u201d and \u201cin theory\u201d a lot, and for good reason. This application of lactate supplementation is very new. While lactate supplementation has been around before, it largely faded away because of formulation and usability challenges. If those challenges have truly been solved, we\u2019re likely to see a wave of new research examining the performance implications of lactate during exercise. The catch is that we\u2019ll probably have to wait 3\u20135 years for that research and its practical applications to become clear.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/PEZ-Newsletter-400.jpg\")
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