Episode 132: The Muscular System

The Science of Everything Podcast

James Fodor

Natural Sciences, Science, Social Sciences

4.8 • 750 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2022

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A journey through the mechanisms of muscles and muscular contraction. I begin by outlining the key structural elements of muscle cells, including the sarcolemma, sarcoplasmic reticulum, the myofibrils and their myofilaments. I then explain the sliding filament mechanism of muscle contraction, and how it is governed by neural signals through the release of calcium. I conclude with a brief overview of the types of muscle contractions, the difference between fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibres, and a short discussion of some metabolic aspects of muscle function, including the role of creatine phosphate. Recommended pre-listening is Episode 26: Human Organ Systems. If you enjoyed the podcast please consider supporting the show by making a PayPal donation or becoming a Patreon supporter. https://www.patreon.com/jamesfodor https://www.paypal.me/ScienceofEverything

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, wow, oh, oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, man.
0:15.0	Oh, my.
0:16.0	And so, you're listening to The Sides of Everything podcast, episode 132, The Muscular System.
0:39.5	I'm your host, James Fodor.
0:41.7	In this episode, we're going to take a tour of the muscular system, focusing on the structure
0:47.0	and function of skeletal muscles.
0:49.6	In particular, we're going to talk about the contraction and relaxation cycle that's at the
0:53.3	heart of how muscles move, and the sliding sliding filament mechanism which is the molecular basis for muscle contraction
0:59.4	we'll also talk about some other aspects of muscle control such as the control of muscle tension
1:06.1	by the nervous system and different types of contractions, and some aspects of muscles and exercise.
1:13.9	Recommended pre-listening is episode 26, human organ systems. Without further ado, therefore, let us
1:21.2	begin. At the outset, I want to emphasize that although we're going to be talking about
1:25.8	the muscular system generally,
1:28.3	most of my remarks will be focused on describing the structure and function of individual skeletal muscles.
1:33.3	What we won't be doing is going through a detailed gross anatomy of the muscular system.
1:38.3	There are around 650 skeletal muscles in a typical human body.
1:42.3	Most of our muscles form a bilateral pair,
1:45.6	so there's one on each side of the body, so there's about 320 pairs of muscles, and you can go
1:50.4	through elaborate atlases showing the different muscles in different regions of the body and
1:55.3	going through all of their complex Latin names. We're not going to do that here because, A, it's
2:00.5	only an audio podcast and
2:01.9	that doesn't work very well in this format. And B, I just personally don't think it's very
	...

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