Can Lactate Supplements Improve Endurance Performance?

Lactate helps fuel your muscles, heart, and brain, but turning that physiology into a reliable performance supplement remains a work in progress.

Published: Nov 13, 2026 9:55 am

Lactate’s reputation has changed quite a bit.

For decades, runners were taught to think of it as something to avoid. It was considered a waste product that accumulated when oxygen became scarce, made muscles burn, and eventually forced us to slow down.

We now understand that lactate plays a central role in supplying energy during exercise. Your muscles produce it, exchange it, and burn it. Your heart uses it. Your liver can turn it into glucose.

That raises an appealing possibility: could consuming lactate help us perform better?

Two recent papers explore this question. In a 2026 mini-review,¹Brooks, G. A. (2026). Molecular vehicles for therapeutic delivery of lactate in exercise and medicine. Sports Medicine and Health Science, 8(3), 240–246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smhs.2026.03.005 George Brooks examines ways to deliver lactate for exercise and medical applications. A subsequent commentary by L. Bruce Gladden and Alexander Berry²Bruce, G. L., & Berry, A. C. (2026). Providing lactate as an ergogenic and therapeutic. Sports Medicine and Health Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smhs.2026.09.002 takes a closer look at the practical evidence, including the studies that have tested lactate supplements.

Their shared starting point is well established: lactate is useful fuel. The performance evidence is considerably less settled.

I find that distinction especially interesting because it captures a recurring challenge in sports nutrition. Understanding why a supplement could work is only the first step.

Your Body Already Runs On Lactate

When your cells break down carbohydrate through glycolysis, they produce lactate. This happens even when oxygen is readily available. Lactate production is a normal feature of metabolism during exercise, at rest, and after eating carbohydrate.

The lactate can then travel elsewhere and be used.

A muscle fiber that produces lactate can release it for another fiber to use.
Lactate circulating in the blood can supply energy to the heart or brain.
The liver and kidneys can use it to make glucose, which can return to the circulation.

This exchange underpins the lactate shuttle, the framework Brooks helped establish.

It changes how we should interpret the lactate measured during an exercise test. A blood lactate concentration reflects the balance between lactate entering and leaving the circulation. It doesn’t mean all the lactate in the blood is unwanted, or that the muscles have stopped using oxygen.

Brooks organizes lactate’s physiological importance around three broad roles:

Fuel: tissues can oxidize lactate to help produce usable energy.
A precursor for glucose: lactate supplies material the body can use to make glucose.
A signal: lactate participates in processes that influence how cells function.

For endurance performance, the first two roles explain much of the interest. Lactate helps move carbohydrate-derived energy around the body and connects tissues that produce fuel with tissues that consume it.

There’s another useful implication here: ordinary carbohydrate feeding already supports lactate metabolism. Some of the carbohydrate you consume is converted to lactate before being used elsewhere.

In other words… you don’t need a lactate supplement to make use of the lactate shuttle.

Why Supply Lactate Directly?

The proposed advantage is partly about delivery.

Getting fuel from a drink or gel into working muscles requires several steps: digestion where necessary, absorption through the intestine, transport through the circulation, uptake into tissues, and metabolism.

Brooks argues that lactate’s transport pathways could offer an additional route for supplying energy. Lactate uses transport proteins that differ from those carrying glucose and fructose. In principle, adding lactate alongside conventional carbohydrates could deliver fuel through another pathway (the same logic behind using different types of carbohydrates in energy gels and drinks).

Experimental evidence supports the idea that ingested lactate can be used rapidly. That makes the proposal biologically credible.

But several questions remain between “the body can burn this” and “this helps you race faster.”

Does enough lactate reach the relevant tissues? Does it increase the useful energy supplied during exercise? Does it spare a fuel reserve (e.g., muscle glycogen) that would otherwise limit performance? Can the athlete tolerate the amount required?

And does it improve performance when compared with an appropriate carbohydrate drink?

To me, that last question is perhaps the most important one. An athlete who consumes lactate is already producing and using lactate internally. Providing more may shift the mix of fuels used without increasing the power or pace they can sustain.

For runners, the most informative evidence comes from oral supplementation studies that actually measure exercise performance.

The Performance Studies Give Mixed Answers

One positive study frequently cited in this discussion comes from Azevedo and colleagues (2007).³Azevedo, J. L., Tietz, E., Two-Feathers, T., Paull, J., & Chapman, K. (2007). Lactate, fructose and glucose oxidation profiles in sports drinks and the effect on exercise performance. PLoS ONE, 2(9), e927. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000927

Six highly trained male cyclists consumed either a lactate-containing sports drink or another sports drink with the same energy content. They cycled for 90 minutes at about 62% of peak oxygen uptake, then continued at approximately 86% until exhaustion.

With the lactate-containing drink, the final effort lasted 6.5 minutes versus 5.2 minutes—about 25% longer.

Those are interesting findings. However, the performance result applies only to the final few minutes of a specific exhaustion test. It doesn’t mean the cyclists completed a race 25% faster. The drinks also differed in carbohydrate formulation and lactate content, so the comparison couldn’t isolate lactate as the sole explanation.

A more recent 2024 pilot trial studied 15 recreational exercisers: nine men and six women. In a randomized, double-blind crossover design, participants took a commercial supplement containing calcium lactate, magnesium lactate, and vitamin D₃, or a placebo.⁴Ewell, T. R., Bomar, M. C., Brown, D. M., Brown, R. L., Kwarteng, B. S., Thomson, D. P., & Bell, C. (2024). The Influence of Acute Oral Lactate Supplementation on Responses to Cycle Ergometer Exercise: A Randomized, Crossover Pilot Clinical Trial. Nutrients, 16(16), 2624. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16162624

Average power during a 20-minute cycling test increased from 197 to 204 watts, an improvement the authors reported as approximately 4%. Peak oxygen uptake and the measured lactate and ventilatory thresholds did not improve.

For a longer test, consider another 2024 study.⁵Bordoli, C., Varley, I., Sharpe, G. R., Johnson, M. A., & Hennis, P. J. (2024). Effects of oral lactate supplementation on acid-base balance and prolonged high-intensity interval cycling performance. Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, 9(3), 139. https://doi.org/10.3390/jfmk9030139

Sixteen endurance-trained male cyclists received calcium lactate or a placebo before a protocol lasting roughly two hours and 14 minutes. They completed repeated 1-kilometer and 4-kilometer time trials interspersed with moderate cycling.

Lactate supplementation increased blood bicarbonate, which helps buffer acid, and reduced perceived effort. Yet time-trial performance did not improve significantly. Some gastrointestinal symptoms also increased during the lactate trial.

In their review, Gladden and Berry describe several other studies with no clear benefit, including 20-kilometer and 40-kilometer cycling time trials. They also identify positive findings in short, intense exercise tests. One running study used an effort designed to produce exhaustion in approximately 90 seconds—very different from marathon fueling.

The pattern therefore depends heavily on which studies and outcomes you select. There are encouraging results, but the literature doesn’t yet provide a consistent answer for prolonged endurance performance.

Fueling Effects Vs. Acid-Buffering Effects

Lactate supplementation has at least two proposed ways to help exercise performance.

One is supplying energy. Another is altering acid–base balance.

Lactate supplements commonly contain lactate paired with minerals such as sodium, calcium, or magnesium. Depending on the formulation and dose, consuming and metabolizing these compounds can increase blood bicarbonate or produce an alkalinizing effect (they make the blood less acidic).

That may explain benefits during intense exercise, when the ability to manage changes in acidity may matter. It also complicates interpreting a positive trial: a runner could improve without the main benefit coming from extra fuel per se. Recognizing lactate’s usefulness doesn’t mean acidity is irrelevant to fatigue. Lactate itself has little direct negative effect on muscle performance, while the acidosis accompanying intense exercise can contribute to fatigue alongside other factors.

The Formulation Matters

“Lactate supplementation” sounds like one treatment. Across these studies, it describes several.

Researchers have tested sodium lactate, calcium lactate, combinations of calcium and magnesium lactate, and lactate-containing sports drinks. Doses, timing, accompanying nutrients, and exercise protocols vary substantially.

Those differences affect what we can conclude, because none of the supplements are giving just lactate.

A positive trial using one drink cannot establish that every lactate capsule works. A negative trial using a particular mineral salt doesn’t settle the question for every possible delivery method.

This is a major focus of Brooks’s review.⁶Brooks, G. A. (2026). Molecular vehicles for therapeutic delivery of lactate in exercise and medicine. Sports Medicine and Health Science, 8(3), 240–246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smhs.2026.03.005 He discusses different carriers for delivering lactate, including mineral salts and compounds involving amino acids or glycerol. Some have been used in human research, and others remain proposals with unresolved questions about digestion, availability, and practical use.

Delivery is a central limitation, too. Gastrointestinal discomfort appears in roughly half of the ingestion studies cited in these reviews, although most reported cases were mild. Some protocols caused more substantial symptoms.

For an endurance athlete, tolerance belongs in the definition of an effective fueling strategy. A nutrient’s metabolic potential has limited value if consuming it interferes with drinking, eating, or maintaining pace.

Even the blood measurements need careful interpretation. Most of the exercise studies discussed did not find higher blood lactate concentrations after supplementation. Concentration reflects both arrival and removal. So lactate could enter the circulation and be consumed without producing a large, sustained rise in the blood.

The useful research question is how much lactate becomes available, how it is used, and whether that use improves performance. I’m not sure we have a clear answer to that yet.

What this means for runners

My reading of these two papers is that oral lactate remains an experimental approach to endurance fueling.

The biological rationale is strong enough to justify further research. The performance evidence is too inconsistent to establish a reliable benefit, a preferred formulation, or a dosing strategy for distance runners.

The comparison I would most like to see is practical: trained runners completing prolonged exercise with a well-designed carbohydrate strategy, with or without a clearly characterized lactate supplement. Researchers would need to account for total energy and electrolytes, measure gastrointestinal tolerance, and use a performance test relevant to racing.

For now, I would prioritize an established fueling strategy that you can consistently tolerate.These papers certainly don’t provide a basis for replacing conventional carbohydrate with lactate or assuming that adding it will improve your marathon time.

What they do offer is a better understanding of the fuel you are already using.

During your next run, your body will produce, transport, consume, and recycle lactate. That process is fundamental to endurance metabolism. Whether a supplement can improve on it is a specific, testable question—and the studies so far leave it open.

References

1Brooks, G. A. (2026). Molecular vehicles for therapeutic delivery of lactate in exercise and medicine. Sports Medicine and Health Science, 8(3), 240–246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smhs.2026.03.005↩︎
2Bruce, G. L., & Berry, A. C. (2026). Providing lactate as an ergogenic and therapeutic. Sports Medicine and Health Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smhs.2026.09.002↩︎
3Azevedo, J. L., Tietz, E., Two-Feathers, T., Paull, J., & Chapman, K. (2007). Lactate, fructose and glucose oxidation profiles in sports drinks and the effect on exercise performance. PLoS ONE, 2(9), e927. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000927↩︎
4Ewell, T. R., Bomar, M. C., Brown, D. M., Brown, R. L., Kwarteng, B. S., Thomson, D. P., & Bell, C. (2024). The Influence of Acute Oral Lactate Supplementation on Responses to Cycle Ergometer Exercise: A Randomized, Crossover Pilot Clinical Trial. Nutrients, 16(16), 2624. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16162624↩︎
5Bordoli, C., Varley, I., Sharpe, G. R., Johnson, M. A., & Hennis, P. J. (2024). Effects of oral lactate supplementation on acid-base balance and prolonged high-intensity interval cycling performance. Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, 9(3), 139. https://doi.org/10.3390/jfmk9030139↩︎
6Brooks, G. A. (2026). Molecular vehicles for therapeutic delivery of lactate in exercise and medicine. Sports Medicine and Health Science, 8(3), 240–246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smhs.2026.03.005↩︎

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