Eli5: why does your muscles come back bigger after ripping them during workout but doesnt when you cut yourself?
In: 0
First of all, unless you are cutting ridiculously deep, you aren’t cutting your muscles. Even if you were to start stabbing yourself on the daily, the nerve signals sent to the brain when your muscles tear from working out are not going to be the same signals sent when you get stabbed in the muscle.
Imagine you get punched every day in the same spot by the same person. So eventually, you start ducking every time you see that person. That’s the kind of adaptation that occurs when your muscles grow back bigger after working out. They know what’s coming and the body has evolved to prepare for repeating occurrences of its experiences.
Now imagine that you walk past that same person, duck, but this time they shoot you in the foot. Assuming you can’t simply avoid walking past this person, there isn’t much you could do to adapt to that, is there? Unless you have bulletproof shoes, you are just going to have to hope it doesn’t happen again. The same is true for your muscles. Your body knows better than to be fooled by any and all muscle damage. There isn’t shit your body can do to protect you from being stabbed so it just heals the muscle and probably makes you a bit more vigilant in the future. If your body went above and beyond after every injury to make sure it couldn’t happen again, too much energy would be wasted. Hence why we evolved to only adapt to certain sorts of damage, such as muscle damage from too much muscle usage.
Latest Answers