Do you ever wonder what enables the body to get the shape or strong enough to lifts? Yes, the muscles formed our body shape, support the body movement, give strength to the body, circulate the blood, and much more. Most of the time, we think that muscles associated with strength or activities with arms, legs, and other appendages, but actually, muscles have more functions. Muscles also give facial expression, respiration, and also eye movements.
What is muscle?
Muscle is made from contractile tissues that perform numerous voluntary and involuntary functions. In the biological terms, muscles can be described as contractile tissues that bring different movements in the body. It can also describe as the body motor. Different types of muscles in the body serve as a powerhouse as it supplies power or energy to the body.
The muscle types
Basically, there are three types of muscle in the body that have different functions. They are skeletal, smooth, and cardiac muscles.
Skeletal muscles: The skeletal muscles are also known as striped, somatic, or voluntarily muscles. This muscle can be found in large numbers throughout the body and it is attached to the skeleton. If looking through a microscope, the skeletal muscles show the cross striations form which makes it easier to differentiate. These muscles work involuntarily control because it is provided by cerebrospinal or somatic nerves. The cerebral cortex is in charge to control the skeletal muscles. Each of the muscle fiber consists of a number of cylindrical cells and nucleus. Skeletal muscles can be found in the body wall, limbs, and also bronchial muscles.
Smooth muscles: The smooth muscles are also called plain, unstriped, visceral and involuntary muscles. The muscle can be found encircle or around the viscera. The autonomic nerves provide these muscles so that they are not voluntary. Therefore, the smooth muscles are very slow to respond to the stimuli. Though they are not fast responding to stimuli, the smooth muscles do not easily get tired during long contractions. In addition, these muscles can contract rhythmically and automatically and spontaneously most of the time. These make the smooth muscle are less dependent on nervous control. The shape of these muscles is the spindle and an elongated cell which have a nucleus in the center. The smooth muscle example is the blood vessel.
Cardiac muscles: The cardiac muscles formed the myocardium in the heart. The muscles are involuntarily and shape in the intermediate structure. In the center of the muscle, there is also a single nucleus that works anastomoses. Compared to skeletal muscles, the cross striations in cardiac muscles are less displayed.
The functions of muscle
Since muscles have high responsible for movement, muscles should present in the body for a large number. Even though there is still no exact number of how much muscles in the body; however, there are approximately 650 muscles. According to the Library of Congress, the total muscles in the body are difficult to count since tissues and organs can also be considered as muscle such as heart, tongue, and uterine muscles.
