Too much lactic acid in your legs

Last night, during athletics,  Colin Jackson, former world champion hurdler, was speaking about aerobic and anaerobic pathways. When you have ME your pathways are fucked. Made me think of The State of Me, chapter 17, extract below:

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stranger         Can you not build up your strength with gentle exercise?

me                   No! Your muscles aren’t producing energy normally. If you climb the stairs you feel like you’ve run a marathon – your muscles burn, they think they’ve done much more than they actually have. And they don’t recover normally.

stranger         You have too much lactic acid in your legs?

me                   Something like that. We have faulty glycolytic pathways. Did you know there are three pathways – one aerobic and two anaerobic – for producing energy? They’re continuously operating in all our activities, though one is usually dominant. My ex-boyfriend told me – we’re still really good friends.

stranger         Who would have thought producing energy was so complex?

me                   I know, you take your body completely for granted, you don’t care how it works until it stops working properly, and then you want to know all about it . . . I’m thinking of taking up the shot-put, it uses the anaerobic alactic pathway where huge amounts of energy are supplied very quickly and no lactic acid is produced.

stranger         I like your sense of humour.

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