If you exercise, you may have learned a very fundamental concept about muscle: muscle mass can be created by repeatedly lifting the things that have been designed to weigh you down. The more often you lift, the stronger your muscles get. This concept also holds true with our mental, physical, and spiritual axes This means keeping your head up and facing your fears head on and believing in your abilities to accomplish your goals no matter what obstacles may be weighing you down. Nourishing ourselves through this type of mentality is similar to watering a plant – you give rise to the growth of something beautiful. The more you exercise believing in your own abilities, the more synapses and memories your brain creates around those thoughts.
This concept of ‘creating memory’ is not just limited to our brain, it is also apparent in our skeletal muscle through ‘muscle memory.’ According to the National Library of Medicine, muscle fibers that have previously undergone strength training but have subsequently lost their mass, can regain mass faster than naive muscle fibers and seem to be protected against the elevated apoptotic activity observed in atrophying muscle tissue – muscle that decreases in cellular size due to inactivity. These nuclei represent a functionally important ‘memory’ of previous strength and may be very long lasting in humans, as myonuclei are stable for at least fifteen years and might even be permanent. With this in mind, let’s choose to honor this principle of gaining ‘memory from repetition’ as it is the foundation of many acquired skill-sets and professions in our world today.
Written by Student Doctor: Navpreet Singh Badesha
©04/20/2018 All Rights Reserved.
Photo found on: @artfulanatomy
Inspired by: Graduating medical school tomorrow!
Every flower has to grow through dirt
This research was published in the National Library of Medicine in January 2016 by The Company of Biologists Ltd. Article Link
