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. I asked Sam and Chip Lange from TOTALEM to come on and chat nerdy with me.
At the end of glycolysis you end up with:
Two Pyruvate
Two NAD+
Two ATP
Now the pyruvate will need to donate an electron to NAD+ (which will now be called NADH).