Human life is muscle work. These contractions or relaxations occur under the influence of nerve impulses passing through the nervous system from the spinal cord and brain. Here are some facts about these parts of our body:
1. Scientists count at least 640 muscles in the human body. According to various estimates, there may be up to 850 of them. The point is not at all that different people have different muscles. Medicine and anatomy are serious and old sciences, so their representatives are simply obliged to have theoretical differences.
2. It is believed that the resource of the heart muscle of an average person by nature is designed for 100 years of work (of course, continuous). The main enemies of the heart are lack of glycogen and excess calcium.
3. A quarter of human muscles (based on the total number) are on the head. Moreover, they begin to work and develop during the prenatal period of life.
4. When expressing negative emotions, 2.5 times more facial muscles are involved than when expressing positive ones. That is, crying is a better workout of facial muscles than laughter. Kisses take an intermediate position.
5. The tailor muscle, located in the front of the thigh, is the longest in the human body. Due to its spiral shape, its length usually exceeds 40 cm. Sometimes the diaphragm is considered the longest muscle, but we breathe with the help of a whole system of muscles that together form the diaphragm.
6. The shortest muscles (only slightly more than 1 mm in size) are in the ears.
7. Strength training, in simple terms, is getting small breaks in muscle fibers. The actual build-up of muscle mass and volume occurs after training, during recovery, when amino acids and proteins “heal” the muscles, increasing the fiber diameter.
8. In order to build muscle mass, you need to make serious efforts. The muscles atrophy quite independently - just look at the astronauts upon their return from flights. They often look exhausted by hard work, although they could not stand any physical exertion - muscles degrade without exertion.
9. Muscles atrophy with age. In the second half of life, a person annually loses several percent of muscle mass just like that, due to age.
10. In terms of mass, the muscles of an average person are distributed approximately in half between the legs and the rest of the body.
11. The circular muscle of the eye, one of the functions of which is to raise and lower the eyelid, contracts the fastest. It also shrinks very often, which leads to the rapid formation of wrinkles around the eyes, so depressing for the fair sex.
12. The strongest muscle is sometimes called the tongue, but for all its strength it consists of four muscles, the strength of which cannot be distinguished. Roughly the same picture with the chewing muscles: the force produced is distributed between the four muscles. Therefore, it is more correct to consider the calf muscle the strongest.
13. Even taking a single step, a person uses more than 200 muscles.
14. The specific gravity of muscle tissue significantly exceeds the corresponding indicator of adipose tissue. Therefore, with the same external dimensions, a person involved in sports is always heavier than a person who is far from sports. A small bonus: oversized people who are not involved in sports find it easier to stay on the water.
15. Muscle contractions absorb about half of the body's energy. Muscle mass burns after fat mass, so exercise is effective for losing weight. On the other hand, serious physical activity for a person who is low in body fat and does not receive adequate nutrition quickly leads to exhaustion.
16. About 16% of people have a rudimentary muscle in the forearm called the longus muscle. It was inherited by man from animals by her reduction of claws. The longus muscle can be seen by flexing the hand towards the wrist. But the same rudimentary muscles as the ear and pyramidal (marsupial animals support cubs with it) are in everyone, but are not visible from the outside.
17. A very important factor in muscle development, paradoxically, is sleep. Muscles receive the maximum amount of blood when completely relaxed, that is, during sleep. All practices of meditation, immersion in oneself, etc. are nothing more than the desire to relax the muscles as much as possible to ensure access to blood.
18. Many muscles in the body work without conscious human control. A classic example is intestinal smooth muscle. Digestion processes take place in the internal organs on their own and sometimes lead to very unpleasant consequences.
19. Schedules of work (with a 12-hour working day) "two on the third", that is, two days off after a long working day, or "day - night - two days at home" appeared for a reason. Most muscle groups take exactly two days to recover.
20. A heel spur is not a bone problem, but a muscle problem. It occurs with fasciitis, an inflammation of the thin layer of muscle called the fascia. In its normal form, it does not allow different muscles to come into contact with each other and with the skin. The inflamed fascia transmits pressure directly to the muscle, which unpleasantly feels similar to the effect on an open wound.
