MikeyOz
May 17th 06, 10:27 AM
was reading this on cool-running and thought that it might be of
interest to some people, I did not know the extent, but I know you can
exercise while in a lactate, certainly a little eye opening though, I
guess the more you train in that zone, the more your body gets used to
it.
> Lactic Acid Is Not Muscles' Foe, It's Fuel
> By GINA KOLATA
> Published: May 16, 2006
>
>
> Everyone who has even thought about exercising has heard the warnings
> about lactic acid. It builds up in your muscles. It is what makes your
> muscles burn. Its buildup is what makes your muscles tire and give
> out.
>
> Coaches and personal trainers tell athletes and exercisers that they
> have to learn to work out at just below their "lactic threshold," that
> point of diminishing returns when lactic acid starts to accumulate.
> Some athletes even have blood tests to find their personal lactic
> thresholds.
>
> But that, it turns out, is all wrong. Lactic acid is actually a fuel,
> not a caustic waste product. Muscles make it deliberately, producing it
> from glucose, and they burn it to obtain energy. The reason trained
> athletes can perform so hard and so long is because their intense
> training causes their muscles to adapt so they more readily and
> efficiently absorb lactic acid.
>
> The notion that lactic acid was bad took hold more than a century ago,
> said George A. Brooks, a professor in the department of integrative
> biology at the University of California, Berkeley. It stuck because it
> seemed to make so much sense.
>
> "It's one of the classic mistakes in the history of science," Dr.
> Brooks said.
>
> Its origins lie in a study by a Nobel laureate, Otto Meyerhof, who in
> the early years of the 20th century cut a frog in half and put its
> bottom half in a jar. The frog's muscles had no circulation — no source
> of oxygen or energy.
>
> Dr. Myerhoff gave the frog's leg electric shocks to make the muscles
> contract, but after a few twitches, the muscles stopped moving. Then,
> when Dr. Myerhoff examined the muscles, he discovered that they were
> bathed in lactic acid.
>
> A theory was born. Lack of oxygen to muscles leads to lactic acid,
> leads to fatigue.
>
> Athletes were told that they should spend most of their effort
> exercising aerobically, using glucose as a fuel. If they tried to spend
> too much time exercising harder, in the anaerobic zone, they were told,
> they would pay a price, that lactic acid would accumulate in the
> muscles, forcing them to stop.
>
> Few scientists questioned this view, Dr. Brooks said. But, he said, he
> became interested in it in the 1960's, when he was running track at
> Queens College and his coach told him that his performance was limited
> by a buildup of lactic acid.
>
> When he graduated and began working on a Ph.D. in exercise physiology,
> he decided to study the lactic acid hypothesis for his dissertation.
>
> "I gave rats radioactive lactic acid, and I found that they burned it
> faster than anything else I could give them," Dr. Brooks said.
>
> It looked as if lactic acid was there for a reason. It was a source of
> energy.
>
> Dr. Brooks said he published the finding in the late 70's. Other
> researchers challenged him at meetings and in print.
>
> "I had huge fights, I had terrible trouble getting my grants funded, I
> had my papers rejected," Dr. Brooks recalled. But he soldiered on,
> conducting more elaborate studies with rats and, years later, moving on
> to humans. Every time, with every study, his results were consistent
> with his radical idea.
>
> Eventually, other researchers confirmed the work. And gradually, the
> thinking among exercise physiologists began to change.
>
> "The evidence has continued to mount," said L. Bruce Gladden, a
> professor of health and human performance at Auburn University. "It
> became clear that it is not so simple as to say, Lactic acid is a bad
> thing and it causes fatigue."
>
> As for the idea that lactic acid causes muscle soreness, Dr. Gladden
> said, that never made sense.
>
> "Lactic acid will be gone from your muscles within an hour of
> exercise," he said. "You get sore one to three days later. The time
> frame is not consistent, and the mechanisms have not been found."
>
> The understanding now is that muscle cells convert glucose or glycogen
> to lactic acid. The lactic acid is taken up and used as a fuel by
> mitochondria, the energy factories in muscle cells.
>
> Mitochondria even have a special transporter protein to move the
> substance into them, Dr. Brooks found. Intense training makes a
> difference, he said, because it can make double the mitochondrial mass.
>
>
> It is clear that the old lactic acid theory cannot explain what is
> happening to muscles, Dr. Brooks and others said.
>
> Yet, Dr. Brooks said, even though coaches often believed in the myth of
> the lactic acid threshold, they ended up training athletes in the best
> way possible to increase their mitochondria. "Coaches have understood
> things the scientists didn't," he said.
>
> Through trial and error, coaches learned that athletic performance
> improved when athletes worked on endurance, running longer and longer
> distances, for example.
>
> That, it turns out, increased the mass of their muscle mitochondria,
> letting them burn more lactic acid and allowing the muscles to work
> harder and longer.
>
> Just before a race, coaches often tell athletes to train very hard in
> brief spurts.
>
> That extra stress increases the mitochondria mass even more, Dr. Brooks
> said, and is the reason for improved performance.
>
> And the scientists?
>
> They took much longer to figure it out.
>
> "They said, 'You're anaerobic, you need more oxygen,' " Dr. Brooks
> said. "The scientists were stuck in 1920."
--
MikeyOz
interest to some people, I did not know the extent, but I know you can
exercise while in a lactate, certainly a little eye opening though, I
guess the more you train in that zone, the more your body gets used to
it.
> Lactic Acid Is Not Muscles' Foe, It's Fuel
> By GINA KOLATA
> Published: May 16, 2006
>
>
> Everyone who has even thought about exercising has heard the warnings
> about lactic acid. It builds up in your muscles. It is what makes your
> muscles burn. Its buildup is what makes your muscles tire and give
> out.
>
> Coaches and personal trainers tell athletes and exercisers that they
> have to learn to work out at just below their "lactic threshold," that
> point of diminishing returns when lactic acid starts to accumulate.
> Some athletes even have blood tests to find their personal lactic
> thresholds.
>
> But that, it turns out, is all wrong. Lactic acid is actually a fuel,
> not a caustic waste product. Muscles make it deliberately, producing it
> from glucose, and they burn it to obtain energy. The reason trained
> athletes can perform so hard and so long is because their intense
> training causes their muscles to adapt so they more readily and
> efficiently absorb lactic acid.
>
> The notion that lactic acid was bad took hold more than a century ago,
> said George A. Brooks, a professor in the department of integrative
> biology at the University of California, Berkeley. It stuck because it
> seemed to make so much sense.
>
> "It's one of the classic mistakes in the history of science," Dr.
> Brooks said.
>
> Its origins lie in a study by a Nobel laureate, Otto Meyerhof, who in
> the early years of the 20th century cut a frog in half and put its
> bottom half in a jar. The frog's muscles had no circulation — no source
> of oxygen or energy.
>
> Dr. Myerhoff gave the frog's leg electric shocks to make the muscles
> contract, but after a few twitches, the muscles stopped moving. Then,
> when Dr. Myerhoff examined the muscles, he discovered that they were
> bathed in lactic acid.
>
> A theory was born. Lack of oxygen to muscles leads to lactic acid,
> leads to fatigue.
>
> Athletes were told that they should spend most of their effort
> exercising aerobically, using glucose as a fuel. If they tried to spend
> too much time exercising harder, in the anaerobic zone, they were told,
> they would pay a price, that lactic acid would accumulate in the
> muscles, forcing them to stop.
>
> Few scientists questioned this view, Dr. Brooks said. But, he said, he
> became interested in it in the 1960's, when he was running track at
> Queens College and his coach told him that his performance was limited
> by a buildup of lactic acid.
>
> When he graduated and began working on a Ph.D. in exercise physiology,
> he decided to study the lactic acid hypothesis for his dissertation.
>
> "I gave rats radioactive lactic acid, and I found that they burned it
> faster than anything else I could give them," Dr. Brooks said.
>
> It looked as if lactic acid was there for a reason. It was a source of
> energy.
>
> Dr. Brooks said he published the finding in the late 70's. Other
> researchers challenged him at meetings and in print.
>
> "I had huge fights, I had terrible trouble getting my grants funded, I
> had my papers rejected," Dr. Brooks recalled. But he soldiered on,
> conducting more elaborate studies with rats and, years later, moving on
> to humans. Every time, with every study, his results were consistent
> with his radical idea.
>
> Eventually, other researchers confirmed the work. And gradually, the
> thinking among exercise physiologists began to change.
>
> "The evidence has continued to mount," said L. Bruce Gladden, a
> professor of health and human performance at Auburn University. "It
> became clear that it is not so simple as to say, Lactic acid is a bad
> thing and it causes fatigue."
>
> As for the idea that lactic acid causes muscle soreness, Dr. Gladden
> said, that never made sense.
>
> "Lactic acid will be gone from your muscles within an hour of
> exercise," he said. "You get sore one to three days later. The time
> frame is not consistent, and the mechanisms have not been found."
>
> The understanding now is that muscle cells convert glucose or glycogen
> to lactic acid. The lactic acid is taken up and used as a fuel by
> mitochondria, the energy factories in muscle cells.
>
> Mitochondria even have a special transporter protein to move the
> substance into them, Dr. Brooks found. Intense training makes a
> difference, he said, because it can make double the mitochondrial mass.
>
>
> It is clear that the old lactic acid theory cannot explain what is
> happening to muscles, Dr. Brooks and others said.
>
> Yet, Dr. Brooks said, even though coaches often believed in the myth of
> the lactic acid threshold, they ended up training athletes in the best
> way possible to increase their mitochondria. "Coaches have understood
> things the scientists didn't," he said.
>
> Through trial and error, coaches learned that athletic performance
> improved when athletes worked on endurance, running longer and longer
> distances, for example.
>
> That, it turns out, increased the mass of their muscle mitochondria,
> letting them burn more lactic acid and allowing the muscles to work
> harder and longer.
>
> Just before a race, coaches often tell athletes to train very hard in
> brief spurts.
>
> That extra stress increases the mitochondria mass even more, Dr. Brooks
> said, and is the reason for improved performance.
>
> And the scientists?
>
> They took much longer to figure it out.
>
> "They said, 'You're anaerobic, you need more oxygen,' " Dr. Brooks
> said. "The scientists were stuck in 1920."
--
MikeyOz