Muscles are essential for the normal operation of your body as they help you control movement and posture. You use them every day, without fail, because without them, you wouldn’t be able to force what you do. By adjusting the length of the muscle, as well as its tension, your muscles can contract.
You have three different types of muscle—cardiac muscle, smooth muscle, and skeletal muscle. This type of muscle controls your entire body. Heart muscle regulates blood flow, oxygen, and electrical signals, as it is responsible for your heartbeat. Your heart muscle functions involuntarily so you don’t have to do anything. Smooth muscle pulls on the hollow structures of your body, which is also an involuntary action. And of course, skeletal muscles, which make up most of your body’s muscles, support your entire body. You need these muscles because without them you wouldn’t be able to move, you would just be unable to move.
Many people are confused about how muscles work. In fact, muscles can only pull or contract (not push). Every day, muscles work in pairs so that a person can bend over, pick things up, and do things. In doing these things, muscles in the body lengthen, and others shorten. The shortened is the contracted, also called the agonist. The muscles that are elongated are called antagonists. Well, muscles are designed only to contract, and not to push. This is why muscles cannot push.
Muscles will not be able to pull if two protein molecules are not present: actin and myosin. They are arranged end to end of the muscle cell, giving the muscle a striated appearance. Muscles help your joints to move, and they perform other actions too and transmit them to other parts of your body, so you can achieve what you want to do.
A muscle contracts or pulls when an electrical impulse from a part of your body, say the brain or another organ, stimulates the muscle at the nerve synapse. The electrical impulses then become chemical signals, which are generated in the terminals of the neurons, meanwhile activating the chemical signals by releasing neurotransmitters.
There is so much to learn about muscles. You have to take care of it, do your best to protect yourself so that you will be strong in the long run. Of course, you need to understand why your muscles contract because you use them in everyday life. To learn more about muscles, talk to your local manual therapist, such as your trusted osteopath or physiotherapist.
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