Connective Tissues

Symphony of the Body

by Johnny Nguyen, BS, FIT Exercise Director

Without connective tissues, your body would fall apart. Your muscles would roll up onto themselves like window shades, your skeleton would topple like toothpicks, and your organs would disperse like pudding. There would be no attachment, padding or borders for the flesh, bone and blood that shape you as a person. You’d be a blob, dispersed across the floor like a bad science fiction.

The major component of all the connective tissues in your body is collagen fiber, formed by protein filaments that align with each other in an orderly arrangement that, when observed under the microscope, appear striated like muscle cells. And like muscle cells they are also wrapped in bundles within bundles, each exhibiting strong chemical bonds that make up the true strength of connective tissue, holding your body together like superglue.

The connective tissues found in your body are tendons, ligaments, fascia, and cartilage. These elements are like the rhythm section that keeps the symphony orchestra together – without this section, the piece would sound like an orchestrated number performed by a herd of monkeys.

Tendons and Ligaments

Tendons attach muscle to bone, allowing the production of movement. Ligaments attach bone-to-bone, creating a linkage system that supports mobility. This anatomical attachment produces movements as simple as scratching your head or as complex as conducting an orchestra.

Tendons and ligaments have relatively low vascular and nutrient supplies, so, if damaged, the healing of each is lengthy. If a tendon or a ligament completely ruptures, surgery is often required to reattach it. But the good news is that the strength of these connective tissues can be increased through exercise. The physical loading that occurs with the right type of exercise stimulates collagen fibers, often resulting in the growth and increased strength of connective tissues. Stronger tendons and ligaments, obviously, can withstand greater forces – those that life can sometime ambush you with: accidental falling and other unexpected events.

Aerobic exercises increase the circulation of blood and nutrients to these connective tissues. This influx increases the metabolism in these tissues, enhancing the replacement of old, damaged collagen fibers with new healthy ones. Cruciate ligaments in the legs of animals are found to be stronger after they ran on a treadmill. This improvement in collagen regeneration, however, does not net an increase in the amount or size of collagen fibers.

Conversely, high-intensity, heavy-loading exercise increases the amount and size of collagen fibers. A reinforced network of connective tissues – in this case thicker tendons and ligaments – is likely needed to support the ability of trained muscles to generate greater forces.

You can surmise then that a combination of aerobic exercises mixed with high-intensity and heavy-loading exercises produces optimal tendon and ligament strength. At FIT, a combination of exercise methods is generally encouraged, and one of the many benefits of this is the increase in connective tissue strength.

Fascia

Surrounding and separating your muscles into different organizational levels and groups are fibrous tissues called fascia. It covers your muscles like sausage casing, running the length of muscles and terminating into tendons, which attach to bones. The force generated by a muscle is transmitted along the fascia that covers it, and is then transferred into the tendon, and finally into the bone, ultimately causing a movement – a wave of the music conductor’s baton, and an explosion into gesticulations, rhythmic movements, “hush” gestures and aggressive pointing. The symphony comes alive.

Cartilage

If ligaments connect bone to bone at their ends, then cartilage cushions their contacting surfaces. The area where two bones articulate is protected by cartilage, which is made of dense connective tissues consisting of collagen cells embedded in a firm matrix, and this tightly packed matrix can withstand amazingly large forces without damage to its surface. Your cartilage can cushion the impact of running and jumping, which often produce forces up to 7 times your own bodyweight. The shocks under your car will blow out under only 2 times the car’s own weight.

While tendons and ligaments have low blood supplies, cartilage has none. This means that the cells that produce cartilage, the chondrocytes, must depend on diffusion of oxygen and nutrients from synovial fluid to stay healthy and to survive. Movement, such as that from exercise, causes negative compression in the joint capsule, drawing synovial fluid, by osmosis, into the joint to bathe cartilage with oxygen and nutrients.

Connective Tissues and Music

I like music, especially if the rhythm section is tight and strong. I like to hear the base and the percussion, beating and pounding with synchronicity. Life is better with music. And like the rhythm section that holds a great song together, the connective tissues hold the rhythm of your own body’s movement together. Life is also better with movement.