Has anyone else grown up with parents and grandparents that always scolded “don’t crack your knuckles you will end up with big huge arthritic joints when you are my age…” I know I have which lead me to do a little research on this particular topic.
Joints can “crack” or “pop” for various reasons. When a person pops their knuckles a bubble is being formed in the synovial fluid of the joint. When a person is able to crack their neck or back, ligaments and tendons are sliding over a bump or the edge of a bone. These are both perfectly normal sounds to make. But then there are also various injuries that can also cause a cracking or a popping sounds to occur with everyday movement of a joint. Injuries that involve torn cartilage (such as in a knee joint) will allow the joints to lock up periodically and the wiggling that a person has to do to resolve this can result in a pop. Also if a person has almost any form of arthritis, the will also experience the cracking and popping sounds of joints. This is caused by having deteriorated cartilage and bones that will make noises when articulated regardless of range and quality of motion.
The former two examples are not harmful to the body, and a lot of times cracking or popping joints is a way to relieve a little tension from the body; I know that is why I do it. Right now I have not seen clinical evidence saying that arthritis can indeed be caused by joint popping, but continuous joint popping and articulating the joints out of their normal range of motion probably does not have a huge health benefit, and as with all bad habits there is potential to find out that it could cause problems later in life, plus its annoying to hear the person sitting next to you constantly cracking their knuckles….
The latter two examples are ones that we already know has ad inflammatory component that plays a critical role in the cracking and popping din that is coming from the joints. These examples show that the noises are caused by arthritis or some other injury and not the other way around.
I got my information from the University of Washington Orthopedics and Sports Medicine website at http://www.orthop.washington.edu/.
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ReplyDeleteInteresting topic. I actually read an article discussing this too - an MSN article I believe - and it mentioned that the pop comes from broken nitrogen bonds in the joints. I've definitely been scolded about cracking my knuckles, by teachers and peers more than anyone. I did read and hear from multiple sources though that cracking knuckles may lead to difficulty performing certain movements in the future, particularly opening twistable jar lids. If that's true I really need to quit this bad habit, some of those lids are hard enough to open as it is.
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I have to admit that I have always had concerns when popping or "cracking" my knuckles, but found relief in know that chiropractors do the same with many joints of the body. As with most things, anything in excess can prove detrimental. I'm sure some forms of popping joints can cause more damage, such as hyper extending vs pulling on a joint to relieve stress. The grinding actions may increase wear and tear and that MAY lead to the OA joints.
ReplyDeleteI have never been able to crack my knuckles- so I decided to figure out why...
ReplyDeleteHere is what i figured out-
Not everybody's joints crack. Some people have a larger separation between the bones and some people can't relax enough to allow the bones to separate.
The source was a kids website but seems to make sense to me...
http://www.kidzworld.com/article/1438-cracking-down-on-knuckles
That is interesting Shawna, I am double-jointed and have generally "loose" joints. This may explain why my joints do "pop" so easily. Maybe I can use this as an excuse for annoying my mother with my joint popping...=)
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