Really strong! 5 things you did not know about muscles yet
Women and muscles, this is not a love story. For a long time we were really afraid to get too much of it: if you want to be thin, muscle packages are disturbing. Today, upper arms should no longer be slim, but also best structured. But you can not do justice to the muscles by reducing them to their aesthetics. Since the beginning of the new millennium, the look on the muscles has changed completely, and you have gained some amazing insights.
1. Muscles persuade organs to do the toughest things
Muscles convert nerve signals into contractions, they could not be trusted for a long time. That changed when, at the beginning of the new millennium, the doctor and Professor Bente Klarlund Pedersen of the University of Copenhagen discovered the so-called myokines (derived from the Greek words for "muscle" and "movement"). These are protein-like molecules that produce the muscles and function as messengers or hormones. They are sent to the bloodstream and can work throughout the body. The musculature is therefore not a passive structure. No, it is an organ that sends out messengers like a gland, which in turn persuades other organs to do things they would not otherwise do.
For example, Interleukin 6, the first and to date the most studied myokin: it causes the cells not to store incoming fatty acids from food but to burn them. It makes them sensitive to the hormone insulin, which transports sugar from the bloodstream to the cells where it can be consumed. And the persuasions are not limited to the metabolism; Interleukin 6 causes the liver to produce more antibodies. Soon the number of myokines was estimated at around 400, then 600 were suspected, meanwhile Prof. Ingo Froböse of the German Sport University Cologne thinks it is quite possible that there are 3000 such messengers. But for all: The muscles only produce them when they are moved.
2. Too few muscles make you sick
The major common diseases are mainly metabolic diseases, in particular that applies to type 2 diabetes. From the perspective of Froböses this disease is but one thing above all: a muscle wasting disease. Because who has enough muscle to burn the sugar in the blood, does not get diabetes. Muscles are the biggest reusers of energy in the body, and therefore, the main responsible for how much of it we consume. Even on the sofa, the muscles consume on average 30 times more energy than the fat tissue. Because the protein structures must be kept warm and repaired if necessary.
It is therefore completely outdated to look at the sport only on the calories burned. What really matters is building or maintaining muscle mass. "The therapeutic potential of musculature is still totally underestimated", says the sports scientist, who heads the Institute for Exercise Therapy and Movement-oriented Prevention and Rehabilitation. "Muscles have tremendous healing power because they are always well-supplied and ready to change."
3. Muscles are the biggest metabolism activator
That muscles are so important for energy consumption, but also has to do with the mitochondria - the miniature power plants in the cells that provide the ready-to-use energy on site. Above all, due to movement at a comparatively low intensity ("aerobic training"), their number in the muscle cells almost doubles, so that significantly more energy is permanently transferred. Walking, walking and easy cycling not only provide more stamina, but also a higher metabolic rate.
The fact that Ingo Froböse likes to call the muscles the largest metabolism activator has other reasons. "Early in the morning, for example, stretching and stretching in bed, muscles stimulate our entire system," says Froböse. "If we loll, they exert a mechanical stimulus on the lymph nodes, so that the lymph in it comes into motion and the nightly waste of the body is effectively transported away."
4. Muscles have needs
Muscle on it, if you eat too little. In a shortage situation, the body breaks down the big energy eaters first. With the effect that the basal metabolic rate decreases and it is easier to increase after the diet - the well-known yo-yo effect. That's why it's so important to provide the muscles with enough food. Their favorite food is proteins or their constituents, the amino acids that compose them.
But to be really good, they need a little more attention. Relaxation for example: If we are under stress, the slight tension in the muscles will make the protein structures with all nutrients inferior, and the whole system will run less round than it could. The most important thing is to use the muscles.And as intensively as possible, because our movements in everyday life take up only a part of them, the so-called red muscle fibers. In order to train the white fibers that are responsible for muscle building and power development, you have to retrieve at least 40 percent of the maximum performance of a muscle. This is not jogging - but no one has to go to the gym. You can train at home with no equipment, such as squats or pushups - today's "bodyweight training," with numerous books and instructional videos on the net. Or you can see what the gymnastics club offers around the corner.
This year, in fact, in the sports clubs throughout the country 800 groups to train according to the "Everyday Training Program" (ATP). You will learn how to use your home and surroundings to promote physical activity. "Be it arm exercises with shopping bags or muscle and joint training while cleaning the house, waiting at the bus stop or stopping at the park bench," said Heidrun Thaiss, head of the Federal Center for Health Education, who founded the ATP. "Every now and then a lunge or ten times on a low wall and get down again sets a training stimulus," says Froböse, whose team has tested the program with twelve groups. Actually, ATP is for people over 60, but to check your own life for movement is useful at any age.
4. Muscles are the pharmacy of the body
Even if you do not know all myokines, it is already clear that we carry a pharmacy in the body with our muscles, which provides us with health-promoting substances - always provided we move. A review published late last year mentions some myokines studied so far and their effects: Irisin, for example, can turn (bad) white fat into (good) brown fat, which can burn and release stored energy directly into heat, consuming more calories , Also Meteorinlike 1 can tan fatty tissue, as we now know. Myonectin improves the absorption of fatty acids in the liver, Musclin increases the formation of mitochondria.
But it's not just about metabolism: a myokin called SPARC reduces precursors of colon cancer on the intestinal lining. The Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF) is currently of particular interest because it plays a role in the development of Alzheimer's and dementia. "There is just a research boost, because you want to know how exactly the BDNF affects these diseases and how it can possibly be used therapeutically," says Ingo Froböse. Myokine as a remedy, that would be a kind of sport by syringe. Swallowing them makes no sense, they break down in the stomach acid. The substances are also poorly soluble and only briefly effective - and these are not all the challenges in drug development. For now, we have to move to benefit from myokines.
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