Cerebral carbohydrate cost of physical exertion in humans

Abstract

Above a certain level of cerebral activation the brain increases its uptake of glucose more than that of O2, i.e., the cerebral metabolic ratio of O2/(glucose + [Formula: see text] lactate) decreases. This study quantified such surplus brain uptake of carbohydrate relative to O2 in eight healthy males who performed exhaustive exercise. The arterial-venous differences over the brain for O2, glucose, and lactate were integrated to calculate the surplus cerebral uptake of glucose equivalents. To evaluate whether the amount of glucose equivalents depends on the time to exhaustion, exercise was also performed with β1-adrenergic blockade by metoprolol. Exhaustive exercise (24.8 ± 6.1 min; mean ± SE) decreased the cerebral metabolic ratio from a resting value of 5.6 ± 0.2 to 3.0 ± 0.4 ( P < 0.05) and led to a surplus uptake of glucose equivalents of 9 ± 2 mmol. β1-blockade reduced the time to exhaustion (15.8 ± 1.7 min; P < 0.05), whereas the cerebral metabolic ratio decreased to an equally low level (3.2 ± 0.3) and the surplus uptake of glucose equivalents was not significantly different (7 ± 1 mmol; P = 0.08). A time-dependent cerebral surplus uptake of carbohydrate was not substantiated and, consequently, exhaustive exercise involves a brain surplus carbohydrate uptake of a magnitude comparable with its glycogen content.