Muscle System

In class I learned about muscles and how they work. I learned that without muscles you couldn't swallow, blink, breathe, digest, or even move. There are three different types of muscles, Cardiac, Skeletal, and Smooth muscles. Skeletal muscles are the muscles around your bones and joints. The Skeletal muscle tissue is made up of long, thin fibers. They are divided crosswise into many little bundles. Longer fibers make the muscles range of movement greater, if a muscle has a great number of fibers it makes it stronger. Skeletal muscles are fastened to their anchoring points by a different type of tissue called tendons. Tendons are extremely strong and have to withstand great forces. You can see tendons moving on the back of your hand when you open and close it.

Smooth muscles are the muscles in you organs (stomach, intestines, glands, blood vessels, skin, and many more).The tissue of smooth muscles are arranged in layers that form very strong, thin, smooth sheets that are very close together. They can stretch a lot if necessary and they change shape to do different things, your stomach will stretch to hold a big meal and then will contract when it is empty. Most of your smooth muscles are involuntary muscles. Involuntary muscles are the muscles you can’t control, like your organs.

Cardiac muscles are only found in the walls of your heart. The cardiac muscles are arranged in a branching form and stretch easily to make the heart larger when it receives blood from the body and contract really quick to send the blood on its way again.