The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
So, you're talking about sparing. Yes. You're talking about glucose sparing. And so, you described, very nicely, the pentose phosphate pathway and some of the things it does. So, there is a limitation in the amount of glucose, but if we can fuel the brain with lactate, then the glucose that is available can do that as well as help fuel the brain.
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So, it's going through this different metabolic pathway called the pentose phosphate pathway. So, that you can make things that are, essentially, gonna be used as antioxidants by things like glutathione peroxidase and these other antioxidant enzymes that are in the brain.
It's also a thermodynamically and energetically favorable source of energy much like ketones. And so neurons like doing that because, one, it's easier, and two, because glucose can then be freed up to be shunted into the pentose phosphate pathway, which can be used to generate NADPH, which is important for glutathione recycling.
another benefit of of neurons in the brain using lactate as an energy source instead of glucose is it spares glucose it's freeing up glucose to be used by another biochemical pathway um known as the pentos phosphate pathway and this pathway uses glucose to make precursors called nadph that's needed for the production of one of the most powerful antioxidant systems in the brain called glutathione