Stop saying lactic acid causes fatigue!
30 July 2024
As the world tunes into the Games in Paris, a
common message during intense athletic
competitions like swimming, cycling, rowing,
and track events is that ‘lactic acid causes
fatigue’.
Phrases such as “their legs must be swimming
in a sea of lactic acid!” or “you can see their
stride shortening as the lactic acid builds up”
are frequently used by commentators to
describe athletes’ visible exhaustion.
However, Loughborough University’s Dr Mark
Burnley, an expert in endurance physiology,
says the idea that lactic acid causes fatigue is a
myth.
In a new video, he explains what lactic acid is,
why it doesn’t cause fatigue, and how the
misconception is linked to stags from the
1800s…
Watch the video on YouTube or read what he
had to say below.
What is lactic acid?
“Every time there’s a major game on or a
sporting event where fatigue gets mentioned,
the only explanation given is lactic acid. And it’s
quite a long way removed from the truth.
Fatigue is extremely complicated”, said Dr
Burnley.
“Lactic acid is a molecule which is found in all
sorts of situations, both biological and
chemical – it was first found in sour milk, which
is where it gets its name from.
“Essentially, lactic acid is a partially broken-
down carbohydrate, but in our bodies, we
should refer to it as ‘lactate’ rather than ‘lactic
acid’. From a physiological standpoint, under
normal conditions lactic acid loses a hydrogen
ion and becomes lactate.
“Lactate is relatively easy to measure in the
body with a blood sample. Even at rest, blood
lactate concentration is not zero, indicating
continuous turnover in the body. It’s a very
useful chemical that is used for lots of different
processes.”
Does lactate cause fatigue?
“As far as we can tell, no, it doesn’t”, said Dr
Burnley, “Experiments have been done both in
humans and in animals and they have shown
pretty convincingly that fatigue is not caused by
lactate or lactic acid.
“What fatigue is, is a reduction in muscle force
generating capacity.
“Researchers have bathed rat muscle in a
medium containing the amount of lactate that
you would produce at the end of a 400m run
and found it had little or no influence on muscle
force generation.
“So, if you bathe muscle in lactate and force
doesn’t drop, that’s pretty good evidence that
lactic acid isn’t causing fatigue.”
He continued: “Other experiments have bathed
muscle in potassium, which we know causes
fatigue. This reduced muscle force by about
75%.
“What they then did was add lactate to that
medium, again the same amount that you
would produce after a 400m run.
“The researchers found the addition of lactate
didn’t cause force generating capacity to go
down any further.
“Actually, what happened was force went back
up to where it was to start with. So, it
completely reversed the effect of fatigue in that
situation.
“In that experiment, lactate actually had a
protective effect rather than a fatiguing effect.”
What chemicals cause fatigue?
“There are lots of other things that cause
fatigue, and a lot of those things are intensity
dependent”, said Dr Burnley.
“So, if you’re doing a marathon, for example,
the lactate concentration in your blood or
muscle won’t rise very much above the resting
level.
“So, it can’t possibly be that lactate causes
fatigue. In that situation, fatigue is likely caused
by running down muscle glycogen stores, the
main source of carbohydrate energy in your
muscles.
“If you do really, really high intensity exercise,
like an 800m run or a mile run, then it is
metabolite accumulation that’s probably
causing most of the muscle fatigue.”
He continued: “However, though complicated,
if we had to attribute fatigue to one molecule,
we should consider inorganic phosphate.
“When you’re trying to produce energy in the
muscle, you break down a thing called ATP and
you need to make that ATP up again because
there’s not a lot of it in the muscle.
“So, to do that, we break down a thing called
phosphocreatine into creatine and inorganic
phosphate.
“When you’re working really hard, you do that a
lot and therefore you accumulate a lot of
inorganic phosphate.
“We know that high concentrations of inorganic
phosphate can result in a loss of muscle force.
And that is the dictionary definition of fatigue.”
Where does the lactate-fatigue misconception
come from?
“There are probably three reasons for the
misconception that lactate or lactic acid
causes fatigue”, said Dr Burnley.
“The first is an historical reason. Lactate was
discovered in the late 1800s in the muscles of
stags that had been hunted to exhaustion.
“They were found to have very high
concentrations of lactate in the muscle. So that
was the immediate link: lactate causes fatigue.
“The second reason is that other molecules –
including inorganic phosphate – and the way
they work in muscles weren’t studied for
another 120 years.
“So, humans had a very long time to be talking
about lactate before anything else came along
that was more accurate in terms of what was
happening in the muscle.”
Dr Burnley said: “The third reason is because
there is a correlation between high intensity
exercise and the accumulation of lactate
because when you do high intensity exercise,
you break down carbohydrates through a
process called glycolysis, which produces
lactate.
“So, if you’re doing high intensity exercise,
lactate will always accumulate. And it’s not
difficult to then just make that jump that:
lactate has accumulated, exercise feels hard,
therefore lactate must have caused exercise to
feel hard and caused fatigue.
“That idea then entered physical education
textbooks and coaching manuals. So, it’s not
surprising that this notion gets handed down,
even to athletes and coaches.”
Take away message for commentators and
those watching the Games in Paris?
Dr Burnley said: “My takeaway message for
commentators and members of the public is if
they ever hear the phrase “swimming in a sea of
lactic acid”, just remember it’s a bit more
complicated and a lot more interesting than
that.
“But also swimming in a sea of lactate is not a
problem because we think it might be
protective.
“Actually, lactate is one of the good guys. It’s
like a sheep in wolf’s clothing, it’s got all the bad
press and it’s not really deserved.”
