What happens when your muscles twitch?
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When muscles contract, on a cellular level, ions move into & out of cells spontaneously, causing a spike in electrical current, resulting in the muscle fibers contracting.
A twitch works by this same pathway, however they are involuntary. Involuntary muscle twitches can be caused by a multitude of things, but at the core they are caused by low levels of magnesium/ some other ion.
Magnesium, potassium, sodium, chlorine, a several other elements are responsible for electrical current throughout the body. When you’re deficient in one, in this case magnesium, it lowers the amount of electricity in a cell required for it to “fire” & cause a muscle contraction. This means that a cell with a standard amount of current running through it might accidentally contract, because the lack of magnesium is bringing the “threshold” for activation down.
Magnesium is not the only ion that can cause muscle twitching, but it is very common. Calcium is also very common.
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