From UCLA Healthcare:

The chemical lactate has gotten a bad rap. Conventional wisdom considered it to be little more than the bane of runners and other athletes, causing stiff muscles and fatigue, and the "sour" in sour milk.

It turns out that view may have been too narrow.

Neuroscientists at UCLA are now looking at lactate with a much more positive eye, considering it a possible replacement "fuel" for the brain in the immediate hours after a traumatic brain injury instead of glucose, the current standard. If they are right, it could change how emergency room physicians and intensive care physicians treat patients with brain injuries in the first critical hours after injury.

Read the entire article.

Labels: lactate, neuroscience, TBI, traumatic brain injury