Is it bad to crack your knuckles and why?

Answer 1

if you crack your knuckles often enough, you can end up with swollen ligaments.

A study looked at 300 people who had been cracking knuckle joints for 35 years. They had slightly swollen joints (which is no big deal). But the real surprise was that their hands were weaker - their grip strength was one quarter as strong as it should been!

It does NOT cause arthritis. In fact, it's not dangerous at all, said Dr. Jonathan Kay, clinical director of the rheumatology unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"The cracking sound you hear when you pull on your fingers is caused by the release of negative pressure within the joint," he said. Inside every joint in the body, a gooey substance called synovial fluid coats the surfaces of cartilage to protect them. Just as two discs coated with mineral oil stick together and can only be pulled apart with a bit of force, so it is inside the joint. When you pull, you break the vacuum seal created by the synovial fluid and the breaking of that seal causes the popping sound -- from the bursting of bubbles of gases dissolved in the fluid.
Curiously, it takes about 20 minutes for the seal to re-establish itself. So crack your knuckles all you want. You might stretch a few ligaments, but you will not give yourself arthritis. But it'll be no fun unless you wait 20 minutes between cracks.

Answer 2

Some scientists wanted to learn more about knuckle cracking, so they actually stuck a sensitive microphone onto a finger. They found that there wasn't just one single sound when you cracked a finger joint - there were actually two separate sounds. The joint space is the space between the bones. There is a liquid in this space, and there are ligaments on each side, holding the bones together. As you pull on the joint, you first drop the pressure in the joint space - and the ligaments get sucked in. Once this pressure gets low enough, a bubble pops into existence - making a popping sound, which is the first of the two sounds.
Now this bubble has a certain size - on average, about 15% of the now-bigger joint space. Because the joint space suddenly has a bubble in it, the liquid, just as suddenly, pushes on the ligaments - snapping them back to their original position. This snapping back of the ligaments is the second sound.
The energy set loose inside the joint is only about 7% of what you need to damage the cartilage. But if you crack your knuckles often enough, you can end up with swollen ligaments.
Another study looked at 300 people who had been cracking knuckle joints for 35 years. They had slightly swollen joints (which is no big deal). But the real surprise was that their hands were weaker - their grip strength was one quarter as strong as it should been!
So cracking your knuckles won't bother you in the short term, but 35 years from now, you might not be able to open a jar of Vegemite! Cracking your knuckles,contary to belief, does NOT cause Arthritis!!

Answer 3

Ask an Expert: Knuckle Cracking and Arthritis

Q: Does cracking my knuckles increase my risk of arthritis?
Answer from Peter Bonafede, M.D., medical director of the Providence Arthritis Center at Providence Portland Medical Center: Likely not. I'm not saying "definitely no" because, while cracking knuckles is common, research on its effects is not. We have only a handful of studies on the subject. None shows a definite link between knuckle cracking and arthritis.

However, cracking your knuckles is neither harmless nor desirable. The arthritis connection may be an old wives' tale, but cracking your knuckles can hurt your hand in other ways, and there's no benefit to it. Some students crack their knuckles after writing a great deal, but cracking knuckles isn't a solution for writer's cramp. Instead, take a break, and bend and stretch out your fingers a few times.

Kids may develop a habit of cracking their knuckles because they like the sound. The "crack" comes because of a change in the synovial fluid, the lubricant that bathes the joints. When finger bones are suddenly stretched apart, the space between the joints widens, and an air bubble forms in the synovial fluid. The bubble quickly bursts and makes a sharp sound.

Nature did not intend us to repeatedly stretch the ligaments of the finger joints. I found two medical articles that talked about patients who had injured their hands from knuckle cracking. One over-stretched his ligaments and dislocated his fingers. Another partially tore the ligament in her thumb.

In 1990, a researcher looked at the hand function in 200 adults, age 45 and above. He didn't find a greater tendency toward arthritis in the 74 habitual knuckle crackers, but the knuckle crackers were more likely to have swollen hands and reduced hand strength. However, an accompanying editorial posed this idea: Perhaps a person must have looser-than-average ligaments in order to crack knuckles in the first place. And those loose ligaments and joints may set the person up for other sorts of joint damage.

In another study, published back in 1975, the researcher visited an old age home and asked patients whether or not they had cracked their knuckles when they were young. He found 15 who remembered they had, and 13 who remembered they had not. When the researcher X-rayed their hands, and compared the two groups, he found no difference in arthritis rates.

What does cause arthritis? There are many kinds of arthritis, but the most common, osteoarthritis, is a function of age and genetic predisposition. If you X-ray hands of people age 65, 70 percent will have arthritis. Osteoarthritis tends to be a bit worse in the dominant hand.

The bottom line: While cracking knuckles may not get you arthritis faster, it won't win you many fans and might injure those fingers in other ways. So it's best not done.

Answer 4

I'm a knuckle cracker and am interested in the answers to this question. I think that cracking knuckles is an indicator of things like arthritis not something that causes. I heard an explanation that the noise is of bubbles being squeezed out of the cartilidge that lubricates the joint. The fact that the bubbles are there in the first place makes the lubrication less effective and allows bone to scrape off bone causing irritation and the urge to crack the knuckles.

Answer 5

most people say that cracking knuckles is bad because you can get arthritis, but it's not true. cracking knuckles just lets the "air" out from the knuckles.

Answer 6

When you crack your nuckles, basically you are moving the air bubbles between your bones. The sound that you are hearing, it is the sound of the bubble moving to a different area. Cracking the nuckles is not really bad, it only makes the nuckles larger.

Answer 7

when you crack your knuckles you allowing fluid to enter in between your joints, this is a good thing, that crack you hear is actually the suction of the joints pulling apart and allowing fluid in.

Answer 8

no, its an old wise tale. when you crack your knuckles you are simply releasing the air that has built up in the pocket of the joint.

thanks for reminding me! that felt great!

Answer 9

cuz it opens urs bones and lets water get through al ur fingers and it will make them fat. so if u want to wear ur wedding ring and have a beautiful hand, i suggest u dont crack ur knuckles. also, u may get arthitis really soon, like age 40, which is too young

Answer 10

It's bad because then your hand s start to get lose and shaky. If u crack it to much and your driving 1 day, you'll lose control of your car and may end up in a severe accident. It happened to my friends mom once