Ever wondered how your muscles repair from a tear?

It’s quite amazing really so I thought I’d share it with you. The plus side to knowing how long this takes is that you can have more realistic expectations of your healing, which should, in theory help you to keep optimistic and motivated to keep doing your exercises!

1. After a muscle injury the frayed and torn fibres die (or become necrotic). This dead material is taken away by macropahges (a type of white blood cell which engulfs and carries away unwanted material in the body).

2. The cellular trauma of the muscle cells tearing stimulates chemicals to be released (insulin like growth factor, human growth factor, interleukin 6, cytokines).

3. These chemicals then trigger a type of muscle building cell called satellite cells (myoblasts) to multiply.

4. The muscle building satellite cells fuse together to form myotubes which join together to form new muscle fibres which is you new repaired tissue.

5. These satellite cells also generate a connective tissue network or scar tissue in other words.

So when a tissue repairs we end up with new regenerated muscle tissue and scar tissue.

It can take between 4 and 24 days for the new muscle tissue to form.

When we compare different tissues in the body, muscle tissue is actually quite poor at repair and regeneration. The muscle building satellite cells which I mentioned above are capable of multiplying but they are only found in muscle tissue at an incidence of 1-5%.

This is why early intervention for muscle injuries is important to get right.

Correct early management can minimise the size of an injury and prevent unnecessary further damage.

Read my blog about PEACE & LOVE to find out the best way to approach a muscle tear in the first few days.

The following articles were used to inform this blog post:

A. D. Bach., J. P. Beier., J. Stern-Staeter., R. E. Horch., Muscle tissue engineering, J. Cell. Mol. Med. Vol 8, No 4, pp. 413-422, 2004

Hurme T., Kalimo H., Lehto M., Jarvinen M., Healing of skeletal muscle injury: an ultrastructural and immunohistochemical study, Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., 23: 801-810, 1991

Campion D.R., The muscle satellite cell: a review, Int. Rev. Cytol., 87: 225-251, 1984

Allen R.E., Temm-Grove C.J., Sheehan S.M., Rice G., Skeletal muscle satellite cell cultures, Methods Cell Biol., 52: 155-176, 1997

Hill M., Wernig A., Goldspink G., Muscle satellite (stem) cell activation during local tissue injury and repair, J. Anat., 203: 89-99, 2003

Li Y., Huard J., Differentiation of muscle-derived cells into myofibroblasts in injured skeletal muscle, Am. J. Pathol., 161: 895-907, 2002

The content of this blog is copyright of Holly Elliott registered osteopath trading as Helping Hands Health 15a Clayton Road, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4RP