Table of contents:
- How do muscles "remember"?
- How muscle memory works
- 1. Exercise creates a nucleus which leads to muscle growth
- 2. Decreased / stopping exercise leads to atrophy, but the nucleus remains
- 3. When the sport continues, the nucleus is ready and willing
- Why do many say that the nucleus disappears when muscle is reduced?
Muscle memory or muscle memory is a phenomenon when the muscles in your body remember what you've done to them. For example, you have been doing weight training for a long time, but for some reason you stopped doing it for 3-6 months. It causes you to lose the strength and muscle that you have been building so far. However, when you start exercising again, you can bring back the muscles that were lost in just a few weeks, as if they were remembering what you left behind.
Many people believe that muscle memory mostly due to nervous system mechanisms. The nervous system mechanism may explain increased strength, but it does not explain how a person can regain muscle size quickly.
How do muscles "remember"?
Unlike other cells, muscle cells have more than one nucleus (cell nucleus) and possibly thousands. The nucleus functions as a cell controller (which allows for rapid, simultaneous and coordinated muscle growth and repair of muscle tissue), and because your muscles have cells that are very many and more complex than other cells in the body, one or more the two nuclei alone will not be able to do its job.
When you have bigger muscles, you also have to add a lot of nucleus. Nucleus enhancement with muscle growth has been shown in several studies. It has been shown that people who take steroids and who grow muscle easily have more than normal muscle nuclei.
We believe that when the muscles shrink, the nucleus is also lost. However, recently, studies using a variety of animal models have shown that muscle atrophy or shrinkage is inactive for up to 3 months, so that we don't lose the nucleus as envisioned.
Since muscles have the same number of nuclei even after you stop exercising, it is easy to build muscle back to its previous size. So, this nucleus appears to act as a 'memory cell'. They know how much muscle you have before you stop exercising.
How muscle memory works
This is what actually happens during the exercise cycle, dropping / stopping exercise, and exercising again:
1. Exercise creates a nucleus which leads to muscle growth
When muscles are overloaded due to resistance training, new nuclei are acquired. Further exercise (along with a proper diet) allows the nucleus to synthesize muscle proteins that make muscle fibers bigger and stronger.
2. Decreased / stopping exercise leads to atrophy, but the nucleus remains
During the period of decline, the muscles defend against atrophy due to the presence of a nucleus. And even if this period of decreasing exercise continues, the nucleus will not disappear even though the satellite cells will disappear causing the muscles to become small.
3. When the sport continues, the nucleus is ready and willing
This is why after a period of descent, previously trained muscles will develop more rapidly as training resumes. The hardest part of muscle growth (forming a new nucleus) has been done, and the nucleus can immediately take action and start synthesizing protein.
Why do many say that the nucleus disappears when muscle is reduced?
That's because in previous studies, they counted the nuclei that belonged to connective tissue and other cells (satellite cells). And the nucleus either disappears or dies due to lack of exercise. The study had an error regarding the muscle nucleus being thought to die along with muscle loss. In fact, the nucleus they studied was not the actual muscle nucleus.
Compared to the old study, the new study uses a different technique to study the nucleus. The new study only counts the actual nuclei and we can see that the number of nuclei is not reduced.
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