Topic summary
Muscle spasm
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Spasm.
Types of spasm
A hypertonic muscle spasm is a condition of chronic, excessive muscle tone (i.e., tension in a resting muscle). This is the amount of contraction that remains when a muscle is not working. A true hypertonic spasm is caused by malfunctioning feedback nerves. This is much more serious and is permanent unless treated. In this case, the hypertonic muscle tone is excessive, and the muscles are unable to relax.