I am addicted to popping my knuckles. The feeling, the sound, the whole experience just feels good. I do it every day at least 5 times. At the same time I am young and the joints in my fingers are starting to hurt more and more. This is partly due to a generalized joint syndrome I have (hypermobility syndrome) but I believe that I may be amplifying the situation by popping my knuckles.
So whats the deal with this - there are little sacks of fluid in there that I am bursting? What’s up with that? What if I quit cold turkey? (I haven’t done it once today). Do monkeys pop their knuckles? Will the little sacks become big sacks and my knuckles will explode? Will my body start to fiend for it (my mind already does…). Is there a benefit to popping my knuckles?
FTR, I don’t just pop my second knuckles, I give every finger a satisfyingly crunchy twist to add to the experience.
Cecil did an article on cracking your knuckles. It can be found here. As I understand it, it is not bad for you, however the last paragraph gives this warning:
Greetings from a fellow addict. Been doing it since my youth. Am now well into my 50s and nary a problem.
I recall one grandmother with bad arthritis and knobby knuckles, but I don’t think that was from knuckle-cracking, and if I ever do develop these conditions, it will probably be genetic.
Allow me a slight hijack ? While I don’t crack my knuckles that often, I do crack my neck, back, shoulders and ankles a lot (the last two making more of a “thunk” than a crack). It’s the same “gas bubbles forming and collapsing in joint fluid” mechanism, right ?
Sometimes, I can crack my sternum. It’s pure ecstacy.
I’m not sure about what harm it does despite what Cecil says. Something doesn’t quite feel right with my hands. I haven’t lost any real functionality though. I have more problems if I play the piano too much. Then my hands start cramping up and spazing so I can’t open them all the way.
I always wondered if cracking the knuckle might be changing the pH a little by drawing out the CO2 bubbles. I thought maybe that would somehow cause a hardening of the joint. The knuckles really do feel kind of hard and numb. I don’t think I can stop though.
Since I began cracking the knuckles of my fingers at about age 13, I have progressively been able to crack more and more things. I can crack wrists, shoulders, ankles, and toes (each began at a different age). I’m starting to wonder what will crack next.
Isn’t that bizarre how everything starts to crack. Usually, the really weird ones aren’t even intentional. The first time my sternum cracked, I was in a meeting and just stretching back between speakers. My chest just exploded, and suddenly everyone was very entertained. I wasn’t even sure what the hell happened. It’s really rare that it happens, and I’m not usually trying to crack it. It feels pretty damned good when it happens though.
In combination with your joint condition it may not be good. But I’ve been cracking my knuckles since I was young and intend to keep doing so until the heat death. Other than annoying my now quite elderly mother it has no adverse effects. In fact annoying my mother with this is somewhat satisfying as she warned against it causing all sorts of problems. Multiple crackings for almost four decades proves her wrong, which she does not take well. HA!
My son’s rheumatologist told him that cracking his knuckles is not bad for normal joints. It releases the fluid, and the fluid builds up again. However, if you have a joint disease or lymph issues (don’t know the why on lymph issues, honestly), knuckle-popping can exacerbate the problem, sometimes drastically. Something about the amount of time it takes to regenerate the fluid, which cushions joints, and the wear and tear on the joints when they go without that fluid, causes the problem.
Here is a pretty good rule of thumb for most medical questions: if it’s “controversial” the evidence is not strong one way or the other, and if that is the case, whatever is being questioned is probably not particularly harmful or particularly beneficial.
With knuckle-cracking in particular, there is a fairly broad range of behaviours and joints, from the snap-an-occasional-pip-joint to the fellow contorting every joint he owns into positions well beyond a normal range of motion.
The evidence for ordinary joint-cracking being harmful is weak, and in my opinion it’s highly unlikely to do anything except produce a satisfying and delicious feeling. I like to say I gotta keep 'em loose and I give my hands a run-through whenever I think about it. I am particularly proud of popping the joint between my thumb metacarpal and the trapezium. The technique was shown to me by my brother who is an extraordinary cracker of backs and other joints.
If it were the case that knuckle/joint popping is bad for you, I am confident some untoward effect would have become evident beyond “hand swelling and lower grip strength” Effect of habitual knuckle cracking on hand function. | Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases which seems a totally bogus finding to me. Of course you are going to find–or maybe you are–that one outlier who wrings his joints so severely they are stretched out and weakened…but ordinary popping and cracks?–I say have at it.
Hand specialists and rheumatologists I’ve talked to over the years have never been impressed with an association, and the formal studies are extremely limited. But one of the reasons they are limited is that, despite knuckle-cracking popularity, no-one in the business seems to think it’s worth studying. While not conclusive, that usually means no one in the hand business has noticed an association.
I have really knobby, ugly knuckles and crooked fingers. But, as I started reading this thread, I thought about the way I crack my knuckles. I do the classic “interlace fingers and push the palms out” method to crack them all at once. Occasionally, I’ll crack them individually by placing my index finger at the bottom joint and using my thumb to press the finger backwards.
At any rate, if I understand the diagrams correctly, what I’m cracking is the 3rd metacarpophalangeal joint – the joint that makes the knuckles you use to figure out which months have 30 days, if you were taught that.
Therefore, the knobby ugly joints are not the ones I’ve been cracking.
I don’t crack my knuckles, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE ADDICTED TO pulling on and cracking my toes. Does that do anything to the toes? Probably won’t affect my popping though, as that and footrubs are seriously close to orgasmic to me.
I can crack my knuckles, my thumbs, toes, neck (either by rotating to the side, or by pulling up on the back of my skull), back, wrists (I’m constantly cracking those), ankles, and rarely my sternum.
I can and often crack my knuckles, shoulders, elbows, neck, lower back and toes. I don’t have much control over the knee. Wrists I can do but have stopped doing them because of a few times when they ended up hurting due to the cracking. Oh and I can force my ankles to crack as well but only when I have some pain in them that I know will be gone after the cracking.
As a teen, I worried about this. I used to pop my knuckles several times a day, and occasionally had joint pain in my hands and my knuckles seemed “knobby”.
A decade later, I pop my knuckles only slightly less frequently but don’t have any joint pain and my knuckles seem LESS knobby.
