Is Cracking Your Knuckles Bad for You?
Science weighs in on cracking your knuckles. (Photo: Getty Images)
Why Is This Important?
Because debate has raged for generations over the true effects of knuckle cracking.
Long Story Short
Scientists used an ultrasound machine to see what’s going on when we crack our knuckles and it was unexpectedly spectacular, but they also provided evidence to suggest that knuckle cracking doesn’t do any damage.
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Long Story
For years we have been told that cracking our knuckles (as well as being an annoying habit in public) could give us arthritis or damage the joints. But nobody has ever come up with any definitive scientific proof.
In April a study from the University of Alberta using MRI scans claimed that the popping sound of knuckle cracking is the result of air bubbles forming in the synovial fluid around our joints.
But now a team at the University of California, Davis have taken things up a notch by using ultrasound machines, which are 100 times faster than MRIs, to look at what really goes on when we crack.
Robert D. Boutin’s team studied 40 people, 30 who regularly crack their knuckles (some as often as 20 times a day for the last 40 years) and 10 who don’t do it at all.
The participants cracked the knuckle at the base of each finger and researchers watched them through ultrasound. What they saw came as something of a shock.
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Boutin told The Washington Post: “What we saw was a bright flash on ultrasound, like a firework exploding in the joint.” He elaborated on the possible cause to the Metro: “We’re confident that the cracking sound and bright flash on ultrasound are related to the dynamic changes in pressure associated with a gas bubble in the joint,” he said.
Researchers found time and time again, in fact in 94 percent of cases, that the popping sound coincided with the flashes of light on the ultrasound. It is still unknown whether the popping sound comes from a bubble being created in the synovial fluid or a bubble bursting.
But knuckle crackers, or ‘crack addicts,’ really want to know, “Is this doing any harm?”
The good news is that researchers found no sign of damage being done to the joints and no difference between those who had cracked their knuckles for years and those who never had.
It seems to corroborate the story of a Californian doctor Donald Unger who spent 60 years cracking one hand’s knuckles and never the other and found no sign of any difference internally.
Bizarrely, Boudin even hints that knuckle cracking may be good for us. He said: “After a joint cracks, the range of motion for that joint increases significantly.”
So maybe we should all be enjoying a good knuckle crack — as long as we’re not in a meeting.
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Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question: Why do some people like cracking their knuckles while others hate it?
Disrupt Your Feed: Surely the myth that cracking your knuckles causes arthritis was invented because it’s so annoying when other people do it.
Drop This Fact: No scientific study has ever found a link between arthritis and knuckle cracking while many have disproved it. It just appears to be a popular urban myth.
By Paul Watson
This story originally appeared on AskMen.
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