Why is muscular system important

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Pain-free clients are happy clients. Claim your free copy of the client back care guide today. Your clients will thank you for it! Link to Client Back Care Guide. All rights reserved. Search Site only in current section. Advanced Search…. Muscle does alot more than just shorten to create movmement! Read this page for an overview of the numerous functions of this amazing tissue. What is muscle? There are three different types of muscle within our bodies, these are: 1. Skeletal muscle 2.

Cardiac muscle 3. Smooth muscle What are the properties of muscle? All muscle types share the following unique properties that allow them to function properly. What do muscles do? How do skeletal muscles move?

It happens when the muscular system and the nervous system work together: Somatic signals are sent from the cerebral cortex to nerves associated with specific skeletal muscles. Most signals travel through spinal nerves that connect with nerves that innervate skeletal muscles throughout the body.

Want to flex an elbow joint? Your cerebral cortex sends a signal through your spinal nerve to the nerves that innervate muscles around the elbow joint.

When that signal reaches the muscle tissue its cells reorganize, causing a contraction that bends the elbow joint! See more from our free eBook library. A study of the muscular system from the edition of Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body. Muscle Attachment and Actions. Muscular System Pathologies. They are also building blocks for enzymes, hormones and vitamins.

Proteins are one of three nutrients that provide calories — the others are fat and carbohydrates. Muscle is also very important to everyone because we need our muscles to survive.

The heart is the strongest muscle in our body and is always looking to get stronger. Muscles enable us to be active and exercise. Our strength comes for our muscles and how much they are used. Ways we can make our muscles stronger are by doing aerobic exercise. A very slight change in the length of the biceps causes a much larger movement of the forearm and hand, but the force applied by the biceps must be higher than the load moved by the muscle.

Nerve cells called motor neurons control the skeletal muscles. Each motor neuron controls several muscle cells in a group known as a motor unit. When a motor neuron receives a signal from the brain, it stimulates all of the muscles cells in its motor unit at the same time.

The size of motor units varies throughout the body, depending on the function of a muscle. Muscles that need a lot of strength to perform their function—like leg or arm muscles—have many muscle cells in each motor unit. One of the ways that the body can control the strength of each muscle is by determining how many motor units to activate for a given function. This explains why the same muscles that are used to pick up a pencil are also used to pick up a bowling ball.

Muscles contract when stimulated by signals from their motor neurons. Motor neurons release neurotransmitter chemicals at the NMJ that bond to a special part of the sarcolemma known as the motor end plate.

The motor end plate contains many ion channels that open in response to neurotransmitters and allow positive ions to enter the muscle fiber. The positive ions form an electrochemical gradient to form inside of the cell, which spreads throughout the sarcolemma and the T-tubules by opening even more ion channels. Tropomyosin is moved away from myosin binding sites on actin molecules, allowing actin and myosin to bind together. ATP molecules power myosin proteins in the thick filaments to bend and pull on actin molecules in the thin filaments.

Myosin proteins act like oars on a boat, pulling the thin filaments closer to the center of a sarcomere. As the thin filaments are pulled together, the sarcomere shortens and contracts. Myofibrils of muscle fibers are made of many sarcomeres in a row, so that when all of the sarcomeres contract, the muscle cells shortens with a great force relative to its size.

Muscles continue contraction as long as they are stimulated by a neurotransmitter. When a motor neuron stops the release of the neurotransmitter, the process of contraction reverses itself. Calcium returns to the sarcoplasmic reticulum; troponin and tropomyosin return to their resting positions; and actin and myosin are prevented from binding. Sarcomeres return to their elongated resting state once the force of myosin pulling on actin has stopped.

Certain conditions or disorders, such as myoclonus, can affect the normal contraction of muscles. You can learn about musculoskeletal health problems in our section devoted to diseases and conditions. Also, learn more about advances in DNA health testing that help us understand genetic risk of developing early-onset primary dystonia.

A single nerve impulse of a motor neuron will cause a motor unit to contract briefly before relaxing. This small contraction is known as a twitch contraction. If the motor neuron provides several signals within a short period of time, the strength and duration of the muscle contraction increases.

This phenomenon is known as temporal summation. If the motor neuron provides many nerve impulses in rapid succession, the muscle may enter the state of tetanus, or complete and lasting contraction.

A muscle will remain in tetanus until the nerve signal rate slows or until the muscle becomes too fatigued to maintain the tetanus. Not all muscle contractions produce movement. Isometric contractions are light contractions that increase the tension in the muscle without exerting enough force to move a body part. When people tense their bodies due to stress, they are performing an isometric contraction. Holding an object still and maintaining posture are also the result of isometric contractions.