• Question: what happens when you have a muscle spasm

    Asked by to sakshisharda, Naomi, Mathew, Ian, Edward on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Naomi Osborne

      Naomi Osborne answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Muscles spasms are caused when our muscles are caused to contract quickly by our brain, without our control. Our brain sends a signal to a nerve cell attached to a muscle, sending an electrical impulse to the muscle fibre causing it to contract.

      How it does this is down to filaments called actin and myosin that lie in parallel and slide against each other, binding and releasing to cause shortening and lengthening of the muscle. When we have a spasm, this happens repeatedly over a short period beyond our conscious control. Muscle spasms are quite normal and it’s not really known why they happen.

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