Lactate Removal at Rest and During Exercise

The breakdown of glycogen to lactate is an important mechanism which enables the muscles to perform rapid and heavy contractions. However, the production of lactate during vigorous muscular exercise causes marked changes in the homeostasis of the muscle cells and in the whole body as well [18]. The increased lactate concentration, or probably the concomitant increase in hydrogen ion concentration is supposed to affect not only the metabolic processes [4, 5, 9], but also the process of contraction in the muscle cells [7, 15]. Consequently, it is of great importance to be able to remove the lactate and to restore the homeostasis of the body as soon as possible after exercise. Already in 1928 Jervell [11] showed that the blood lactate concentration could be made to fall at a faster rate, compared with resting conditions, when moderate exercise was performed in the recovery period. This observation has been confirmed by several other investigations [2, 6, 8, 12, 17], and in a recent study by Hermansen and Stensvold [10] it was shown that the highest rate of lactate removal was achieved at a work load of approximately 65% of the individuals maximal oxygen uptake.