High fasting lactate levels reflect excessive glucose utilization and conversion to lactate, coupled with impaired lactate clearance, often due to competition with fat burning, which contributes to the syndrome of diabetes.

“when lactate is high it reflects the fact that during these times of fasting when glucose is not really supposed to be being used much okay you're still using too much glucose converting too much of it to lactate and at the same time your lactate clearance system isn't working very well and typically that's because you're having competition between lactate and fat to be burned and you know so this all feeds into the syndrome of diabetes”