If you’re human, you know the feeling.  You wake up and start to get an odd sensation in the calf, the back, or another part of the body. Suddenly, agony ensues. It’s the result of a muscle spasm, and all the victim can do is wait and pray to whatever gods that the twisting pain passes.

The American Association of Neurological Surgeons estimates that 12 million people worldwide suffer from muscle spasms at one time or another. The spasms can appear in many different body muscles, resulting in all sorts of symptoms and presentations.

Skeletal muscle spasms are the most common types of muscle spasm, and most of them are relatively harmless, though momentarily painful. But if the muscle spasm is particularly painful, continuously happens and recurrently, it’s time to seek medical attention and find out what is going on.

TYPES OF MUSCLES

There are three types of muscles in the body. These include the cardiac muscles, which pump blood via the heart; a skeletal muscle, which moves external body parts, including the arms, neck, back, trunk, legs and face; and smooth muscle, which moves the hollow structures in the body’s interior. These include the stomach, intestines, esophagus, arterial muscles and the uterus muscles.

Skeletal muscles are either directly anchored to the bone or held there by a tendon. When a muscle contracts, a body part moves. Most muscles are controlled by the brain, and their contraction requires several steps by fibers and cells, which get their nutrients from the bloodstream.

Smooth muscle is found in the walls of internal structures like the intestines, bladder, arteries and the eye’s iris. They circle the structure and squeeze it when they contract. These are largely involuntary muscles and are controlled by the unconscious brain using the autonomic nervous system. Smooth muscle has the same contraction mechanism as skeletal muscle but uses different proteins to achieve its ends.