If you ask many people what the primary fuel for your brain
is they will most likely tell you that it is glucose. In fact many sources used to say that the brain could ONLY
use glucose as a fuel. However, it
has been known for some time that ketones are more efficient fuel source for
our brains. In fact this article says that
ketogenic diets have been used as a treatment for epilepsy since the
1920’s! And now, an even more
efficient fuel is being talked about: Lactate. Peter from Hyperlipid has a good
write up about a paper
that talks about the brain using lactate, and why he thinks it is such a good
fuel.
This is all well and good, I am all for feeding my brain the
most efficient fuels. If we
evolved primarily to support such big and “expensive” (energy consumption-wise)
brains this would seem a very important thing to do to maintain good overall
health. However, after reading all
this I am left wondering: How am I supposed to get all this lactate to feed my
brain? I can’t eat lactate. Also,
with all these fuels for our brain, is there an optimal ratio of fuels? Let’s take a look.
