Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D.

It is a signaling molecule that's signaling to other proteins, to other organs, to basically work harder and respond to this hard work that is going on, right?

So with improved insulin sensitivity, we do know that vigorous intensity exercise, for one, it does cause your muscles to contract, right?

So you can actually just in and of that of itself, if your muscles are contracting, you can basically cause 50 to 100 times more contractions than at rest.

That's a lot, right?

And that actually forces glucose to come into your muscles.

So your muscle is a big sink for glucose.

But your muscle also has to transport that glucose across it.

And that's where lactate comes in.

Because when you're working hard, your muscles are producing lactate.

And that lactate essentially signals to your muscle to increase these GLUT4 transporters.

These are the transporters that are responsible for bringing glucose out of your circulation, pulling it into the muscle.

And so lactate's actually what is responsible for that signaling effect.

to increase the GLUT4 number or translocation to the cell surface, muscle cell surface.

And so what happens is that you're basically with the more intense or the more vigorous intensity of the activity, the more glucose you're going to bring in because you're having more of those transporters there.

And the transporters actually last around for a while.

So there's a lasting effect.

It's not like they just, they're there when you're working out and then they go back.

No, they stay active for quite a while, right?

Bringing more glucose in.

And so it's unbelievable to actually think about how beneficial vigorous intensity activity is if you're thinking about a 10 times efficient.