Happy New Year!

Greetings!

It has been a long month with the holiday and a new year is now upon us.  I hope everyone had a wonderful time with their families and friends.  As for myself, my family just went back home to Houston giving me the much needed time to finish a few posts that I have been working on before the holiday and the fam rolled into town.

I was watching a football game with the guys a while back and a few of my buddies were arguing about a players' injury and what type he had.  This conversation stuck with me not only because they were both wrong about who and how that player was injured, but I also was surprised with the fact that they did not know the difference between say a tendon and a ligament.  I then realized that this confusion is more common than I had thought so I thought it would be a good idea to make a post about some of the basic components that let the body move the way it dose and identify the differences between them.

BONE

Example of Bone Structure 

When we are infants we have some 270 bones, but as we grow certain bones fuse together and during our growth into adulthood we end up with 206.  There are four main types of bone; long, short, flat and sesamoid.   Bone not only provides the structural foundation to keep our bodies upright, it is also is responsible for the tapestry of joints, tendons and ligaments throughout the body.  Bone structure and function could easily have it's own post due to it's complex nature, but for the sake of simplicity, we will stick to the very basics.

MUSCLE

When people see this chart in my studio they can't help but take a moment and appreciate the complexity of their own body.  There is an argued upon 640-650 muscles in the body.  This is debated because when you get into the tiny muscles, it's hard to decide where one muscle ends and the next begins, in a sense. (some argue that there are even more muscles, due to origins and insertions and a true distinction of a separate muscle). Muscles provide contractions, which lead to force and locomotion for our bodies.  They're important for posture and of course body formation. Just as the bone, the muscle is so complex this post could not do it justice, but you should know that not all muscles are alike.

Skeletal Muscle

There are three muscle types: Skeletal, Smooth and Cardiac.  Skeletal are the muscles you normally think of like biceps and abs and such. Skeletal muscles are made up of many components that can be broken down like those little Russian dolls that fit into each other over and over again. (Take a look above as to how complex they are, and that is only the surface of muscle physiology) Since we can manipulate these muscles' actions they are deemed voluntary. Smooth muscle is found in the walls of organs and are involuntary because we cannot manually control them, but make no mistake they are very vital.  Finally, as you would suspect, cardiac muscle is found in the heart and is also involuntary.

JOINTS

A joint is the point where two bones meet each other with contact and provide movement. As you can see from the picture above there are many types or joints all of which have a particular movement pattern.  The major joints such as ball and socket joints in the shoulder and hips provide multiple planer movements.  Less complex joints such as hinge joints found in the elbow and knee and have fewer planer movements. Pivot joints such as in the neck allow for rotational movements. There are others as you can see above, but the three I've mentioned are the typical joints you hear about in everyday conversations.  Please note that this classification of joints is an simple method to identify them with ease as joints are also classified as; fibrous, cartilaginous and synovial.

LIGAMENT

Ligaments connect bone to other bones.  As you can imagine there are many bones in the body so there must be many ligaments as well.  The common ligaments that you hear about are those found in the knee, ACL being the most popular.

TENDON

Tendons connect muscle to bones. Tendons are like little elastic springs, which help with stability during movements and help generate force.  The Achilles tendon is probably the most common tendon you hear about.

I cannot even begin to explain how fascinating and complex the human body truly is.  As you can see each of the components discussed have a very unique and important job for everyday functions.  Although each component has it's own task, they all work as a team to provide optimal functions for the body. When one of these become injured, such as the football player I spoke of earlier, the body has a hard time completing a simple task not just because a certain tendon or ligament is damaged, but all the other components in the area are now affected because the team effort of these components has become disrupted.  The purpose of this post was to help identify the bare basics of these commonly confused structures of the body so hopefully the next time one of these structures comes up in a conversation, you will be able to discern between the classification of them.  Thanks for reading!

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