I was listening to Eric give a lecture during his ventilator pre-conference workshop. I forget the exact context, but he mentioned that lactate was a normal product of glycolysis. While lactate can be produced through glycolysis, this statement somewhat shook my understanding of how and why lactate is produced. I approached him later and asked him to explain why you would need to produce lactate if there was neither a supply or demand of oxygen. Here is my understanding of why lactate is produced.