Functions of the Muscular System
Muscle Madness
Types of Muscles
The muscular system in your body is composed three types of muscle, skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, and smooth muscle. First off, skeletal muscle is mainly attached to your skeleton and moves by control or voluntarily. Next, cardiac muscle is the muscle of your heart and contracts by itself or involuntarily. Finally, smooth muscle is found in your blood vessels, eyes, hair follicles and the walls of organs like your stomach and intestines.
Skeletal Muscle
The main function of skeletal muscle is to provide simple voluntary movements to keep you alive. Large movements would include things like walking, running, standing, playing sports, cooking, or even spinning in a chair. Smaller movements would include chewing, drinking, blinking, talking, and typing. Skeletal muscles also contract as a reflex to stimuli, like moving your hand from a hot cup, pulling your finger away from touching a sharp object to look at it, or blinking your eyes when an eyelash lands on it. Your abdominal muscles and lower back muscles also help to protect some of your vital organs.
Cardiac Muscle
Your cardiac muscles pump blood. The contraction of the heart muscle is involuntary and is mainly controlled by your heart's own electrical system with and without influence from factors in the blood. Your heart is supposed to receive blood from your muscles, pump it to your lungs, receive the blood from your lungs, and then pump it out into your arteries to take care of your whole body. But when a heart muscle doesn't receive enough blood because of dead heart tissue or lack of oxygen, you’ll have a heart attack.