[HN Gopher] How water controls the speed of muscle contraction
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       How water controls the speed of muscle contraction
        
       Author : galeaspablo
       Score  : 24 points
       Date   : 2024-07-11 17:36 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | wdh505 wrote:
       | Tldr; other papers simplify muscles to the molecular level. This
       | one explores how it acts as an engine in various contexts: human
       | neuron contraction, insect hydraulic contraction, and shape of
       | the whole fiber throughout the process.
       | 
       | -------
       | 
       | Interesting stuff
        
       | bionhoward wrote:
       | Lot of paywalls lately, here is a preprint for this one
       | 
       | https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.20.481216v3
        
       | bobs_salsa wrote:
       | It's not clear from the article. Would something like creatine,
       | considering it's ability to increase water retention, positively
       | or negatively impact the muscles speed?
        
         | nonameiguess wrote:
         | Doesn't exactly seem like a particularly well-validated model
         | at this point. Given they're saying muscle speed is limited by
         | the speed at which water can move through the muscle, pushing
         | more water through the same sized tube takes longer, so that
         | would seemingly mean anything that caused greater water
         | retention would slow you down.
         | 
         | But obviously that breaks down pretty quickly. You can't make
         | yourself faster by dehydration. Your body maintains the water
         | level it does for a reason. Catalysts and enzymes need to exist
         | in specific concentrations to work best. Presumably, you retain
         | extra water when taking creatine because creatine's role in
         | catalyzing ATP production relies upon being at a specific
         | concentration and more creatine means you need more water. But
         | even if that excess water slowed down the maximum theoretical
         | rate at which a muscle could contract, muscles that contract
         | are also limited by the availability of ATP. If creatine is
         | doing its job, then you'd have more available more quickly. You
         | can contract faster with available energy than you can with no
         | energy. You can't just isolate a single factor in muscle
         | contraction and intervene in that without having other effects
         | on the same complex, multifactorial process.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-07-11 23:01 UTC)