Muscle & Nerve Health

You will be familiar with the idea that muscles help us move our bodies. Those muscles are called skeletal, because they attach to the bones of our skeleton. Did you know that there are muscles in our organs, which we cannot control? For example, muscles in our blood vessels change their diameter, and in our intestinal tract they help move its contents along. Our heart is also a special type of muscle. All muscles consist of fibres that contract, or shorten, and relax; and to do this efficiently they require not only fuel, but also certain minerals and salts, such as sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium.

Our muscles cannot be healthy without healthy nerves. The nerves are pathways for electrical impulses and supply our skeletal muscles with the signals that they need to work. Additionally, these nerves send signals back to the brain about muscle length or position ‐ signals that help us maintain our posture and do things like touching our noses with our eyes closed.