Is it true that the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body?

In many places you can read that this small and very important organ for us is more powerful than any muscle. We checked if this is true.

The idea of ​​the tongue as the strongest muscle is spread by many resources, including "Arguments and Facts", "News", pedagogical community "Lesson.rf", Faktoved.ru, "100 facts", as well as some publications (“Necessary reading for the mind and entertainment”, "500 scientific facts that will surprise you"). About this reports expert of Elena Malysheva’s program “Live Healthy!” And writes Nobel Prize winner in literature Olga Tokarczuk in her novel “Runners”.

Firstly, the statement in question is incorrect, if only because the tongue is not one muscle, but some. Unlike other muscles such as the biceps, the tongue muscles do not develop around the supporting bone. They intertwine to create a flexible matrix.

Four muscles in this system attach the tongue to structures in the head and neck. One muscle holds on to the base of the skull, another connects to the bone in the throat, there is a muscle that grips the lower jaw, and another wraps around the roof of the mouth. They all move their tongue from side to side, up and down. The remaining muscles make up the “body” of the tongue. They are what give it the ability to take on different shapes, allowing it to lengthen, shorten, twist and round, helping us speak and swallow. Because the tongue is made entirely of muscles and not bones, it is very elastic, has a huge range of movement and shape, while maintaining its volume.

Next, you need to understand what the “strongest” muscle is. From a scientific point of view, there can be no clear understanding here.

Skeletal muscle consists of many muscle fibers that have points of attachment to bones and are located parallel to each other. Each muscle fiber is made up of small substructures called sarcomeres. A sarcomere is a functional unit of the contractile apparatus of skeletal muscle. More muscle tissue means more sarcomeres, which means maximum force production. Therefore, if we talk about brute physical strength, the largest muscle will be the strongest. In the case of a person it is quadriceps femoris muscle on the front of the thigh and gluteus maximus muscle - on the back.

But not by brute force alone. As is known from physics, thanks to the principle lever it is possible to perform an action which, if applied directly, would require much greater force. These levers in our body are the bones, which transform muscle contractions into more sweeping movements. For example, our biceps pulls on the bones in our forearm to lift a dumbbell. Since our forearm is long and the biceps pulls it straight towards the elbow, he says Khalil Iskarus from the University of Southern California, it takes a lot of force to move our hand up to the shoulder. Our jawbone, in contrast, is a much shorter lever. That's why chewable - the main muscle of our jaw - is also a contender for the role of the strongest in the human body.

If we talk about endurance, then, as the magazine notes, Scientific American, there is no equal to our heart. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, this essential muscle pumps blood in a circle, supplying it to the rest of the muscles.

As for the tongue, to measure the strength of its pressure, scientists use a special instrument in the form of a cone filled with air. During this procedure, the subject needs to hold the object in one position in the mouth, pressing it with the tongue to the palate. Row experiments with such a device showed that the tongue, even as a group of muscles, is not the strongest.

Thus, there is no unambiguous concept of “the strongest muscle in the human body,” but language cannot be called such in any context.

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Fact or Fiction?: The Tongue Is the Strongest Muscle in the Body
2. Is it true that the tongue is the strongest muscle in the body?
3. What is the strongest muscle in the human body?