Most of us have, whether by accident or on purpose, cracked our knuckles before. If not your knuckles, maybe you’ve cracked your wrists, ankles, back, or even your neck before.
Some of us are serial crackers, while others get creeped out by the noise and feeling altogether. No matter how frequently (or how purposefully) you crack your joints, do you know what’s actually happening in your body?
The popping or cracking sound coming from your knuckles is basically caused by the synovial fluid that’s in between your joints.
This lubricant substance needs to be released every now and again for your joints to feel loose and comfortable; when you don’t have synovial fluid on the joints, that’s when stiffness can occur.
When you stretch your joint – like when you crack your knuckles, for instance – you’re creating space in the fluid, which in turn causes bubbles to form. The bubbles then collapse and pop, causing the noise you recognize.
What about when you stand too quickly and you hear your knees pop? Or you lift your leg to climb over something and you hear a crack come from your hip joints? (That happens to me constantly.) Well, that’s most likely just the sound of tendons sliding between joints or over muscles.
So is this a harmful thing, cracking these joints to pop these fluid bubbles, purposefully or not?
If you really want to go all-out, you could even go to a professional cracker. What is that, you ask? It’s exactly as it sounds! Someone who professionally cracks your joints in just the right way so it is most beneficial and the least harmful to your body. Not going to lie that sounds amazing.
What do you think about these findings? Do you crack your knuckles often? Are you afraid of cracked knuckles? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.