Muscle care and Fatigue

MUSCLE CARE

The voluntary muscles are the only ones that require your everyday care. Muscles remain in good condition only when they are used. If they fall The Muscles / 195 into complete disuse, they atrophy or waste away. Short of this, if they are used relatively little, they lose strength and vigor and their tone diminishes. Healthy vigorous muscles are important for many reasons: for good posture, graceful movement, and a sense of well-being. The spring in the step of a healthy vigorous man isn't simply a matter of well-developed muscles, but of the contribution that good muscular health makes to overall body health and even to mental outlook. Also, strong muscles protect the bones, joints, and internal organs more effectively against injury. In our increasingly sedentary way of life, unless we resort to special measures, our muscles are victimized by disuse.

Actually, when muscles are not used, they have relatively little need for blood and nourishment; and as a result most of the capillaries, the tiniest blood vessels which supply them, collapse and remain collapsed, out of business most of the time. The greater the activity of muscles, the more the capillaries opens up and, in fact, the more capillaries may be developed by the body to supply the need. With sedentary living, there is little demand. One famed experiment by Dr. Hardin Jones of the University of California has shown that the average sedentary American man is, in terms of muscle circulation, middle-aged by the time he is 26.

Using Geiger counter tests to follow blood flow through muscles in teen-agers and in 500 industrial workers, Dr. Jones established that between the ages of 18 and 25, the flow drops 40 percent; by the age of 35, it is down 60 percent, at which point, in the sense of physical vigor, the average sedentary man is less than half the man he used to be. Because of our sedentary living, deliberate exercise is essential-and this applies to all of us, women and children as well as men. The objective of the exercise should not be the development of big muscles, for muscle size is not a true measure of fitness. A well-founded exercise program should aim at strengthening muscles and also the circulatory system in the interest of endurance-the ability to sustain activity and keep going without quick fatigue.