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[RC] Lactic Acid - goearth

This may affect some minds from established thought.  As reported in yesterdays Washington Post and quoted from this weeks issue of  Science Magazine,  says..." It is common wisdom among runners and other sports enthusiasts that lactic acid is the enemy of endurance.  The chemical is a byproduct of metabolism during periods of intense exercise, when oxygen supplies cannot keep up with energy output.  Its accumulation in work-stressed muscles has long been considered a major cause of achiness, exhaustion and failure.  Now in an Olympian reversal, scientists have found that lactic acid actually enhances a tired muscle's ability to keep on twitching.  The biochemistry and physiology that propel leaping legs and barbell-boosting arms start with a nerve impulse that delivers the mental demand for action and ends with a rush of electrically charged sodium, potassium, chloride, and calcium atoms into and out of cells in synchronized succession....  In the words of Science magazine, in whose Friday issue the new work appeared, lactic acid may be "the latest performance-enhancing drug."   The new work does not prove that various strategies for reducing lactic acid buildup-such as drinking bicarbonate of soda or "warming down" muscles-are of no value to athletes, researchers said.  But it may mean they work for reasons other than what was thought."  ts