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Cracking your knuckles will cause arthritis in later life.


___ True ___ False ___ Maybe


ANSWER: False. Depending on your point of view, knuckle-popping sounds disgusting or cool. There is no evidence that cracking your knuckles inflames the joints and leads to arthritis. The cracking causes the bones to pull apart, forming a gas bubble and breaking the adhesive seal in the joint. Crack! About a quarter of the people in the U.S. crack their knuckles and might begin to lose their grip a little. Constant cracking can weaken the fingers.

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Posts: 1356 | From: Woodbridge, VA | Registered: Jul 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Joseph Z:
About a quarter of the people in the U.S. crack their knuckles

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Is it just me, or does this seem like a really conservative estimate? I guess because I'm a cracker, and the majority of the people I know are crackers, I just ASSumed that everybody cracked one thing or another. I guess you learn something new everyday...

-Shea

ETA: I reread my post and had to laugh at the fact that I called myself a cracker.

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Originally posted by Joseph Z:
My cracking places:
* All knuckles on my fingers
* Twist my feet left and right with my two hands. There's a pop there
* Cartilege in the back of my neck when I rotate it in a particular position
* A consistent pop by holding my 3 end fingers closed and twisting
* Stooping my right leg, pop the ankle
* Cartilege in both my elbows. Just stretch my hands backwards and roll and they grind
* Consistent pop in my right thumb. Just bend it
Got one on my right index finger too
* Found another one in my left hand by bending it backwards and roll the index finger
* Straighten my left knee and flex and bend and pop there

I can't think of any others yet.

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I can only do it about once a week, but I can crack my wrists by using my other hand to bend the palm towards the forearm. Got to be careful, because doing it wrong seems to hurt...a lot, but it makes for a very satisfying pop when I can get it to go.

For "performance cracking":
I extend my arms and then flexing my muscles as though I'm trying to hyper-extend my elbow. For the observer it looks like I'm not doing much, and then a sudden "pop".

A real attention getter is my neck. By twisting my head like some action hero trying to break a neck, I've gotten almost a dozen very loud cracks. I sometimes enjoy following this with going completely limp for an apparant suicide

I finish performances with "cracking my nose". I cup both hands over my nose, then jerk them to the side with a "crack". The noise isn't my nose though, it's my thumbnail flicking one of my upper teeth

Posts: 257 | From: In front of a computer | Registered: Jul 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

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Joints are the meeting points of two separate bones, held together and in place by connective tissues and ligaments. All of the joints in our bodies are surrounded by synovial fluid, a thick, clear liquid. When you stretch or bend your finger to pop the knuckle, you are causing the bones of the joint to pull apart. As they do, the connective tissue capsule that surrounds the joint is stretched. By stretching this capsule, you increase its volume. And as we know from chemistry class, with an increase in volume comes a decrease in pressure. So as the pressure of the synovial fluid drops, gases dissolved in the fluid become less soluble, forming bubbles through a process called cavitation. When the joint is stretched far enough, the pressure in the capsule drops so low that these bubbles burst, producing the pop that we associate with knuckle cracking.

It takes about 25-30 minutes for the gas to redissolve into the joint fluid. During this period of time, your knuckles will not crack. Once the gas is redissolved, cavitation is once again possible, and you can start popping your knuckles again.

As for the harms associated with this habit, according to Anatomy and Physiology Instructors' Cooperative, only one in-depth study regarding the possible detriments of knuckle popping has been published. This study, done by Raymond Brodeur and published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, examined 300 knuckle crackers for evidence of joint damage. The results revealed no apparent connection between joint cracking and arthritis; however, habitual knuckle poppers did show signs of other types of damage, including soft tissue damage to the joint capsule and a decrease in grip strength. This damage is most likely a result of the rapid, repeated stretching of the ligaments surrounding the joint. A professional baseball pitcher experiences similar, although obviously heightened, effects in the various joints of his pitching arm. But assuming you haven't signed a multimillion dollar contract to constantly pop your knuckles, it hardly seems worth the possible risk to your joints.

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Posts: 2940 | From: Michigan | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged |