THE GREAT BLUNDER: SPORTS SCIENCE BREAKTHROUGH
Sometimes, observation of simple phenomena in living tissue can give important clues about its function. For example Soviet sports scientists, determined to thrust their own athletes ahead of the West in a one-upmanship war, discovered that skeletal muscles have their own pumping mechanism. It stemmed from a simple logical question: how do skeletal muscles supply blood to their own tissue in a heavily contracted state? The contracted muscles would offer such a powerful resistance that no fluid could ever pass through them. It seems an impossible task and yet, in the working state, muscle fibres need all the energy there is to maintain the supply and somehow they get it. Anaerobic breakdown of sugar - glycolysis - is one way of doing it without using oxygen or blood, but that is not enough as the demand for energy is huge.
A simple observation made by sports scientists of the muscle tissue gave them the clue. When weightlifters picked the weight up and held it above their heads for a few seconds in that position to register their success, their arm muscles began to vibrate and shake in a rhythmic pattern. The heavy weight (sometimes 250 lbs of it) was supported by muscles and the energy demand was phenomenal. To meet this demand muscles relaxed and became taut again in quick succession, thus acting like a pump to allow the exchange of blood and fluids. Thus a new phenomenon or functional property of skeletal muscles was discovered, namely that muscles have their own pumping mechanism.
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