The motion, witnessed among different parts of your body, is one of the most significant and obvious signs of life. This wonderful phenomenon is solely owed to the activities of various kinds of muscles present in your body. Though there are three major categories of muscles, namely skeletal, smooth and cardiac, you can find over 700 distinct kinds of these contractile organs in the human body, each denoted with a particular name. Apart from generating movements in different parts of the body, the muscles also serve various other purposes, such as, the generation of heat, maintenance of posture and stability, pumping of blood, protection of organs and easing the flow of blood. Here follows the brief description of some of the most important muscular system functions:

Creation of Movements

The primary goal of all the muscles is to create movements in the body. These movements can be of very different kinds depending upon the need and type of task to be performed. Do you know that muscles exhibit only two types of motions, viz. contraction and pulling or relaxation? Then how is it possible that you can rotate your arm at the shoulder joint up to 360o? Yes this is because the components of these contractile organs carry out their activities in coordination with one another.

The muscles located in the internal organs generate movements that are substantially different from those exhibited by their counterparts in the external organs. Among the three major categories of the muscular structures, the smooth and cardiac muscles are usually found internally, while the skeletal muscles are present in the external organs. The externally located muscles form a protective covering around your bony skeleton and render it a great deal of protection and mobility.

The activities like running, jogging, walking, weight lifting, doing sit-ups and push-ups, and so on, are all accomplished by the skeletal muscles. By doing these exercises and taking proper care of the diet, you can ensure the growth, strength and perfect health of the muscles. This will make you capable of executing more vigorous activities and adopt a smart and stylish lifestyle.

Maintenance of Body Posture

The beautiful and attractive posture of your body is maintained by the sufficiently thick muscular structures firmly attached to your, otherwise ugly looking, bony skeleton in its bare form. But you can increase or decrease the size and thickness of your skeletal muscles by means of exercise and diet control. Just imagine, if you had no muscles, you would be just like a horrific skeleton which would produce terrible cracking sounds at joints while making movements.

Rendering Stability

The desirable strength and stability to your erect standing posture is rendered by support and efficiency of muscles. The intricate framework of bones in your body could do nothing with regards to standing confidently perpendicular and walking with energy and force. The muscular activities are controlled by the nervous system where head acts as the master organ.

The balance of the body is ensured by your brain with the help of muscles, and if there were no such contractile organs, you would never be able to either stand or sit with confidence, but kept on lying idle on the ground or just made sluggish and staggering movements. So, pay regards to Nature for your beautiful posture, impressive personality and sophisticated & bold lifestyle.

Protection of Organs

Muscles not only give beauty to your body and stability to your standing, but also provide a great deal of protection to your internal delicate organs. You can realize the immense importance of this contractile tissue from the simple fact that the 206 individual pieces of bones are joined with one another with the help of muscles to form a beautiful and strong framework or skeleton. Based on the close association and collaborative working of muscles and skeleton, the muscular and skeletal systems are often combined to form just one system, called musculoskeletal system.

This closely intertwined network of contractile tissues and bones, acts as powerful shield against any possible harm to the internal vital organs, such as, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach, intestines, brain, bladder, and so on. Here it is also important to note that the skeletal muscles also act as a protective covering for the bones, for if they were exposed to the environmental hazards, they would become weak and brittle.

Generation of Heat

When you put your muscles to work, you need to provide them with the required amount of energy as well which is generated by themselves by the utilization of various available food particles or nutrients. The energy is extracted from the energy-rich organic matter and is used for carrying out vigorous movements during exercise. This energy also comes in the form of heat to maintain the optimum body temperature, which is 98.6 Fo.

Pumping of Blood

Both cardiac and smooth muscles take part in the pumping and distribution of blood across each corner or cell of the body. Cardiac muscles are limited to the walls and histological components of your heart which contribute to the strong contracting movements to force the blood into the vessels of the circulatory network.

After the blood is released from the heart, it moves inside the blood tubes with the help of rhythmic wave-like motions or impulses that are produced by the smooth muscles present in the walls of blood vessels.

Role in Digestion

The smooth muscles present in the wall of stomach help in the churning of food that enters this important organ of human digestive system. Moreover, the smooth movement of the food from the mouth to the stomach and along the entire length of the gastrointestinal tract is owed to the presence and functionality of the contractile tissue in their walls. To sum up, if there were no muscles in the body, along with other serious problems, you would also be facing the issue of digestion.