Hip
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This thread is about getting forum members interested in doing a very simple, informal study to measure blood lactate levels (using a lactate meter) before and after a short bout of exercise. If you are interested, please post.
Using a lactate meter, severe ME/CFS patient Dr Mark Vink discovered that his blood lactate levels were abnormally high after exercise, and remained high for much longer than would normally be expected.
This abnormal lactate response that Dr Mark Vink detected in his own blood might be unique to ME/CFS, so I thought it might be a good idea for some of us to try to replicate his results using a relatively cheap blood lactate meter.
Mark Vink's story is given below.
Mark Vink is a doctor in the Netherlands who was hit by severe ME/CFS. His condition is such that it takes him twelve hours to recover from just the 5 to 6 yard walk from his bed to the bathroom.
Dr Vink decided to test some of his blood parameters before and after doing this 5 to 6 yard walk to his bathroom — which for his body is intense physical exercise. In particular, he used a handheld blood lactate meter (the EDGE Lactate Analyser), which works on a pinprick of blood (a bit like a blood glucose meter), to measure his minute-by-minute blood lactate levels before and after this 5 to 6 yard walk intense exercise.
His minute-by-minute testing showed his blood lactate levels initially peaking five minutes after exercise, which is what you would find in a normal healthy person. And in a normal healthy person, after this initial lactate level peak, blood lactate will quickly start going down again (it normally goes back to its baseline level around 60 minutes post exercise).
But Dr Vink found that rather than continuing to go down after the five minute peak, his blood lactate rose again to another even higher peak at 30 minutes post-exercise. The readings he took using his blood lactate meter were:
The second peak at thirty minutes is not found in any medical literature. Dr Vink said his blood lactate levels were higher than even those seen in marathon runners.
Mark Vink's published study (the full paper) is here:
The Aerobic Energy Production and the Lactic Acid Excretion are both Impeded in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
And there is this interesting article on Cort's blog about ME/CFS Vink's study.
What I am wondering is whether this very simple blood lactate after exercise test might have any diagnostic implications. Might a relatively cheap blood lactate meter be a useful diagnostic tool for ME/CFS?
And how does it relate to the 2-day CPET test for ME/CFS (which among other things measures a patient's lactate threshold — the exercise intensity at which lactic acid starts to accumulate in the blood)?
Note: in the theory of PEM proposed by Myhill, Booth and McLaren-Howard, they provide a model to explain this high lactate found in ME/CFS patients; see this post.
I think it's worth trying to reproduce Dr Mark Vink's results.
Possibly his prolonged elevations in lactate level will not be found in all ME/CFS patients; but it would be interesting to know how many other patients have these prolonged post-exercise lactate elevations, and whether the manifestation of such prolonged elevations might correlate to ME/CFS severity, or correlate to some specific ME/CFS subtype.
Using a lactate meter, severe ME/CFS patient Dr Mark Vink discovered that his blood lactate levels were abnormally high after exercise, and remained high for much longer than would normally be expected.
This abnormal lactate response that Dr Mark Vink detected in his own blood might be unique to ME/CFS, so I thought it might be a good idea for some of us to try to replicate his results using a relatively cheap blood lactate meter.
Mark Vink's story is given below.
Mark Vink is a doctor in the Netherlands who was hit by severe ME/CFS. His condition is such that it takes him twelve hours to recover from just the 5 to 6 yard walk from his bed to the bathroom.
Dr Vink decided to test some of his blood parameters before and after doing this 5 to 6 yard walk to his bathroom — which for his body is intense physical exercise. In particular, he used a handheld blood lactate meter (the EDGE Lactate Analyser), which works on a pinprick of blood (a bit like a blood glucose meter), to measure his minute-by-minute blood lactate levels before and after this 5 to 6 yard walk intense exercise.
His minute-by-minute testing showed his blood lactate levels initially peaking five minutes after exercise, which is what you would find in a normal healthy person. And in a normal healthy person, after this initial lactate level peak, blood lactate will quickly start going down again (it normally goes back to its baseline level around 60 minutes post exercise).
But Dr Vink found that rather than continuing to go down after the five minute peak, his blood lactate rose again to another even higher peak at 30 minutes post-exercise. The readings he took using his blood lactate meter were:
Note: normal resting blood lactate in healthy people is in the range 0.5 to 2.2 mmol/L.Blood Lactate Levels Before and After Exercise
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Blood lactate just before exercise:..........1.6 mmol/L
Blood lactate 5 minutes after exercise:......8.0 mmol/L
Blood lactate 30 minutes after exercise:....11.8 mmol/L
The second peak at thirty minutes is not found in any medical literature. Dr Vink said his blood lactate levels were higher than even those seen in marathon runners.
Mark Vink's published study (the full paper) is here:
The Aerobic Energy Production and the Lactic Acid Excretion are both Impeded in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
And there is this interesting article on Cort's blog about ME/CFS Vink's study.
What I am wondering is whether this very simple blood lactate after exercise test might have any diagnostic implications. Might a relatively cheap blood lactate meter be a useful diagnostic tool for ME/CFS?
And how does it relate to the 2-day CPET test for ME/CFS (which among other things measures a patient's lactate threshold — the exercise intensity at which lactic acid starts to accumulate in the blood)?
Note: in the theory of PEM proposed by Myhill, Booth and McLaren-Howard, they provide a model to explain this high lactate found in ME/CFS patients; see this post.
I think it's worth trying to reproduce Dr Mark Vink's results.
Possibly his prolonged elevations in lactate level will not be found in all ME/CFS patients; but it would be interesting to know how many other patients have these prolonged post-exercise lactate elevations, and whether the manifestation of such prolonged elevations might correlate to ME/CFS severity, or correlate to some specific ME/CFS subtype.
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