Muscles

In the Name of Allah, The Most Gracious, Most Merciful
How does man move?
When someone moves from one place to another, lifts something, or does a certain physical work, what is the secret behind such movement or work? The answer is:
the muscles. When you go to a butcher’s to buy some meat, the meat you buy is made up of muscles. Due to His Infinite Divine Wisdom, the Creator, Allah, Glory to Him, has made muscles of millions of fibers each of which ends in a nerve. When orders come to these fibers from the brain or from the nervous system, they contract and become 60% shorter than they usually are. In other words, a muscle fiber whose ordinary length is 10 cm’s becomes only 4 cm’s long when it contracts.

Contraction of muscles, which are connected with bones, causes the bones to move. In fact, without this property of contraction, which Allah, All Mighty, has given to muscles, man would be like a motionless log lying on the ground. The volitional movement of muscles, movement of limbs, and movement of your head and hands …etc, are all based on the bone system, each bone of which is connected with a couple of muscles that move it easily and smoothly in different directions. What is this secret?!

No one so far knows exactly how food energy that exists in the cells of muscles is changed into work or movement, i.e. mechanical energy! This miraculous phenomenon is still very much of a mystery! The whole matter could be summed up as follows: A muscle, which ends in a nerve, receives an order from the brain or the nervous system to contract; and when it contracts, it makes a certain bone move. This is simply how we move. You might be sitting in the living room, for example, and suddenly you notice that your little son is going directly towards the stove, so you jump forward to hold him back. This means that in a single instant, you conceive danger and, therefore, an order goes, quite suddenly and quickly, from your brain to the muscles, which, in turn move and help you jump to him and take him away from danger. This is an amazingly complicated process the facts of which are still very much of a mystery!

Number of muscles in human body and their components:
Scientists say: A medium size muscle has 10,000,000 fibers; and man has 600 muscles, 500 of which are volitional while 100 are non-volitional, i.e. reflex. If you are sitting in a dark room, for example, and then suddenly the light is turned on, the iris of your eye automatically begins to contract. Now, the question is: can you prevent the iris from contracting or expanding? The answer is: definitely not, because it is a non-volitional muscle.
Also, the intestines, the different organs of your body, and the lungs move while you are unaware. This miraculous creation is the Make of Allah, Who has perfected all things. Does not such Infinitely Great Creator deserve to be worshipped and obeyed?! When someone climbs the stairs from one floor to another, this means that he carries his body, which weighs 70 kg’s on average, and moves it 3 meters up. This effort equals nearly 1.5 horsepower, which is really miraculous. When man moves, eats, lies down, walks, runs, lifts or carries things, he should always think of Allah’s Divine Words about him:
“He is created from a water gushing forth from between the backbone and the ribs.” [LXXXVI; 6,7]
“Verily, We have created man in the best stature. Then, We will reduce him to the lowest of the low.” [XCV; 4,5]
To wrap up, Contemplation on muscles, alone, is enough to make you firmly believe in Allah, All Mighty! Without muscles, no human being could do anything, and no human civilization could ever have been established on earth. Yes, indeed! Allah, Most Gracious, has made human movement and work conditional on an amazing muscular system, which, in turn, is based on a miraculous nervous system! How is food energy turned into mechanical one is still very much of a mystery!
* * * Praise be to Allah, the Lord of Creations