Lactate produced during exercise should not be conflated with lactic acid or defined as the cause of metabolic acidosis.

“And we split that, we liberate a proton. So, when you're splitting your ATP and you're not able to keep its level high, you're gonna develop protons, and the lactate is gonna be there and people are gonna associate the proton with the lactate and call it lactic acid. This is a big misnomer and big m”