So why can't the heart have tetanic contractions when skeletal muscle can? And how does a tetanic contraction occur? Does it happen when twitch contractions overlap with each other?
why can't heart muscle have tetanic contractions
- Thread starter tammie123
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heart muscle can have tentanus contraction in theory but however not very likely, it has a bunch of fiber around the heart to contract only 1 thing the heart. The heart's mass does not change rapidly so the contraction force in heart muscles contract at a steady rate. Plus, you can see the heart contraction tune out of rhythm and people have cardiac arrest.
on contrary, the muscle reach tetanus because it contracts with a higher force than its optimal range.
tetanus occurs when for example a muscle of 50 cm contracts to lift 20 kg (it successfully did), however, you don't let it relax after dropping 20kg load and lift another 30kg (it successfully did) and drop the 30 kg. at this time, the relaxed-state muscle after 30kg lift is much mroe than 20 kg load. Continue same with 40kg, 50kg. at one point the RELAXED-STATE muscle is too tense to even stretch anymore and it reaches tetanus.
tetanus has to do with the starting tension in skeletal muscle. All skeletal muscle contracts somewhat already b4 lifting a load in order to make it fast.
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