Is muscle scar tissue?

[wannabehuge]

Are muscles technically scar tissue, or does it just behave like scar tissue? After breaking down, it reforms tougher, thicker, stronger. To me it sounds like the same thing.

[Bigm999]

It is not scar tissue, nor does it 'behave' like scar tissue. They are utterly different. You're trying to equate a few superficial details.

Eg

Chickens lay eggs that are white and smooth and hard. My neighbours car is white and smooth and hard. Could a chicken lay a car? Sounds like the same thing.

[Curiosity]

I'd say the basic difference is that when building muscle, the micro-tears that form after lifting weights fill in with more muscle cells, which makes the whole muscle bigger and stronger but doesn't necessarily make the area where the micro-tear was tougher than the rest of the muscle. Scar tissue fills an injury in with cells that are entirely different than regular skin cells, or so google tells me. So with a cut, instead of making the skin bigger or stronger as a whole, the scar fills in the cut with something called "fibroblasts" and collagen, which makes that specific location tougher and (slightly) more resistant to being injured again. (Seriously, if you cut yourself with a knife, scar tissue's not gonna stop that a second time.)

Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that having scar tissue on a muscle is actually a detriment (as opposed to having zero effect at all) because it wouldn't give you any strength benefit.

[Rarity]

Actually, muscle can contain some scar tissue but not in the sense that you think it does. It varies from person to person, as well as how fast the muscles grow. Guys who are absolutely huge or have used steroids can thank scar tissue for making their muscles appear bigger. However, it would be a very small fraction of the actual muscle size that is made up of scar tissue.

[flamedelft]

Originally Posted by Curiosity

I'd say the basic difference is that when building muscle, the micro-tears that form after lifting weights fill in with more muscle cells, which makes the whole muscle bigger and stronger but doesn't necessarily make the area where the micro-tear was tougher than the rest of the muscle. Scar tissue fills an injury in with cells that are entirely different than regular skin cells, or so google tells me. So with a cut, instead of making the skin bigger or stronger as a whole, the scar fills in the cut with something called "fibroblasts" and collagen, which makes that specific location tougher and (slightly) more resistant to being injured again. (Seriously, if you cut yourself with a knife, scar tissue's not gonna stop that a second time.)

Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that having scar tissue on a muscle is actually a detriment (as opposed to having zero effect at all) because it wouldn't give you any strength benefit.

the micro-tears that form after lifting weights fill in with more muscle cells

Wrong, muscle cells stop dividing after a certain time (and I'm pretty sure it's before birth). One of the side effects of this is that you can't get muscle cancer. Iirc, muscle cells respond to stress by hypertrophy (which means they enlarge, not divide).

So with a cut, instead of making the skin bigger or stronger as a whole, the scar fills in the cut with something called "fibroblasts" and collagen, which makes that specific location tougher and (slightly) more resistant to being injured again.

Not necessarily, some skin scars don't have to form properly (there could be loads of reasons for this, vitamin C deficiency can be one of them), making them even less resistant to stress that the skin they replaced. Also, they might not be just superficial, the fibrous tissue (the tissue scars are made of) can "grow" deeper, even into the muscle (think puncture wounds, or botched up stitches after invasive surgery), which can negatively affect motion, flexibility and strength.

[Rarity]

Flame is 100% correct.

[Bigm999]

Originally Posted by ★whim★

Flame is 100% correct.

No. 75%, tops. 2 seconds on any search engine makes it very clear there are muscle cancers.

[The Magus]

Also, like with brain cells, research is showing that there ARE cases where muscle cells can divide, though less frequently than, say, skin or liver cells.

[wannabehuge]

Thanks guys!! That's a lot of information, and it's more than I thought I'd get back. Thank you for taking the time to answer my question and explain it to me.

[Rarity]

Originally Posted by Bigm999

No. 75%, tops. 2 seconds on any search engine makes it very clear there are muscle cancers.

Actually from what my books say, it's extremely rare. So if it's rare then that most likely means you would have to have a predisposition (from genes) to actually get it. More than often it is benign, which is not cancer - just a noncancerous growth/tumor. Though I am sure steroid users may actually be more prone to it since an over abundance of HGH could trigger the growth of a tumor in between muscle fibers/on muscle fibers/somehow inside muscle fibers. It's still very rare no matter how they look at it.

So in short, it's really odd factors far outside the norm that can cause cancer to develop in skeletal muscles (like having an uncommon illness, wonky genes, etc).