SKELETON CAN NOT WALK

Amar Nath Mukherjee

Nor a dead person can move; Why? The reason being the dead person’s muscles become non-functional and the skeleton does not have any muscles. So in both the cases the body does not have the ability to move. Hence for all the body movement, our muscles activity is absolutely required.

Some of our muscles do not require bones for their movement like cardiac muscles, smooth muscles etc., whereas it is impossible for all bones to move without the help of muscles like hands, legs, head etc. Harder the movements, stronger the muscles you need. As such, a strong muscle with adequate muscle mass is indicative of a healthy body. Hence we can not afford to underestimate proper maintenance of our skeletal and other muscles. The main part played by our muscles is given here as under:

a) The skeletal muscles act as body’s shock absorbers, whereby all our joints, particularly our load bearing ones are protected from faster wear and tear. Athletes, sports persons during their games, fall number of times but their bones are protected from breaking by their strong muscles.
b) Well toned muscles maintain proper lubrication of our joints.

c) Well toned muscles maintain proper transportation of venous blood flow towards the heart.

d) Glucose is mainly stored in our liver and muscles as glycogen, as such well toned muscles will have a greater capacity to store glycogen for future energy needs of the body and if the stronger capacity is less due to weak muscles, the excess glycogen gets converted into fat layer and deposit over the muscles of the body.

e) Weak muscles will have a lower mitochondrial density, thereby reducing availability of the total energy produced by the body.

f) The weak muscles will have a lesser insulin receptors as a result of which muscles tissues become insulin insensitive causing one prone to be a diabetic-2 patient.

In view of the above it is essentially important to maintain the muscles of the body well toned and strong for which a regular workout is essential with body movement against some resistance.

The resistance could be either external with dumbbells, barbells, push + pull against a spring which offer resistance to all body movements or our own body weight can be utilised for creating resistance of the movements like squirting, push ups, crunching by leg lift etc.

The muscles can only be strengthened by resistance training or weight training or strength training and all types of workouts are the same with only different names. The gradual atrophy of muscles tissues called Sarcopenia may even start at young age due to prolonged inactivity and underused muscles and it is “ Use it or lose it proposition.” However, there are other factors also responsible for losing strength of muscles, such as hormonal change like depletion of testosterone level in men and estrogens level in women, oxidative damage, infiltration of fat into muscles, inflammation and resistance to insulin, occasional problems arising out of brain and nervous system, in case of a rare autoimmune disorder named as Myasthenia gravis.

Apart from medical assistance needed for the said pathological problems, regular exercise is essentially required to substantially ameliorate and also to evade the incidence of developing various muscular disorders in our life.

Besides regular morning or evening walk one should incorporate at least 10 to 15 minutes of resistance training by apportioning the total workout time one can afford.