“Cut The Glucose! Bring On The Lactate!”

Dr Brooks has shown, for example, that in many tissues, lactate is preferred as a fuel over glucose. During intense activity, the muscle mitochondria burn it preferentially and even shut off glucose and fatty acid fuel use. Brooks used tracers to show that human skeletal muscle, heart muscle and the brain prefer lactate to glucose as fuel and run more strongly on lactate. Lactate also signals fat tissue to stop breaking down fat for fuel.