Muscle and immunity.
This is part 4 of the immunity series.
What do muscles have to do with immunity?
This is the first reaction of most people who hear this for the first time.
Every muscle has a function and we have specific muscles that support our immunity system all the way.
You remember my stories about the lungs,
The digestive system and also about the blood circulation.
Each system is supported by the muscles to make it work.
Beside the support of every part of our body the muscles do have a more direct function in the immunity.
All our muscles are made to move.
This is basically their function.
When you use muscles regularly they are able to grow stronger and more resilient.
Strong muscles have their own production of positive chemicals such as antioxidants and they burn the carbohydrates taken in by the digestive tract for the energy and warmth of your body.
Your body must stay at the right temperature to combat intruders and defence itself by having a specific temperature.
We know that when we get a fever our temperature will rise to fight any bacteria,
Virus or infection.
All your muscles and organs are responsible for the heat inside your body.
Good muscles provide a constant temperature.
To have good muscles you need to use them as mentioned before.
A minimum of two hours a day of activity is needed to keep them functioning well.
It is important to use as many muscles as possible during the different activities every day.
The more muscles involved in your actions the better your body responds to attacks of any virus or infection or bacteria.
To understand this we should specify activity first.
Activity is everything that uses more than three joints.
Why three joints?
We need these three joints to activate a large amount of interactive muscle sets.
Each muscle has an agonist and that is the muscle that starts the movement and an antagonist.
This is the muscle that corrects the movement and brings the bones back to the original position.
To give you a simple example look at your arm.
There is an agonist called the biceps that curls the arm and behind the arm is the triceps which duty it is to stretch the arm back to its original position.
This happens everywhere in your body at any moment in time.
Growing up and getting older we should use the muscles and challenge them every day at least a little bit.
Muscles love the challenge to stay in good condition and that is why we have to walk that meter more every time or lift a little bit more weight every time.
Just little things makes a big difference.
Your muscles are very fast in adoption of movements.
The more often you do a specific movement the better they find an efficient way to do what you wish them to do.
Aging muscles get first more precise,
Stronger,
Faster and powerful.
But at a certain individual age the decline sets in and the speed of the decline and the way it will all depends on what you did in your younger years.
You do not have to be an athlete or a runner or do a specific sport to be a very high competitive level to improve your health by the use of your muscles.
It is more important to use them well and often only that way you get positive results.
Muscles do have a different function besides the power source.
Due to the fact that the muscle moves in one direction while contracting the veins in the direct neighborhood get stimulation like receiving a side pump during these contractions.
The muscle assists the blood stream with a pump function.
When the muscles decrease the pump will lose its power and the veins must do all the pumping by itself which leads to exhausting and overuse and finally dysfunction.
Our heart is also a muscle in itself and has different strengths on different sides.
Meaning that the muscles are not evenly strong everywhere.
All muscles can and must be trained to maintain certain strength this is also accounts for the heart.
The direct effect of the immune system of the muscles is founded in this supportive function to all organs and fluid systems of our body.
Keeping the muscles in optimal shape helps to boost your immune system at all time and even in time of recovery.
Good muscles are those who are well trained every day.
Hereby we also should consider physical work as a positive addition in a varying way to improve maintain and regain them during aging.
Constant exercise are a must for every person during the aging process for maintenance and constant recovery and should be used by everybody.
You do not need to go to a gym but work out with what you have.
Just look around you.
Anything is possible even a bag of rice can help potatoes.
Lift it.
Make yourself stronger.
Understand that resistance needs to be felt in your muscle and never be too easy.
You have to overcome.
This is the end of this podcast about the muscles.
If you have any question and I guess there will be many.
As these podcasts are only impressions on the topic to make you curious.
Just leave a note.
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Be welcome.
My name is Arnald van der Heer from the Netherlands.
Check my other podcast and just make it work.
Thank you for listening.
